


How to Overthrow the Government

by Fitzcarraldo



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Aged-Up Morty Smith, Incest, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2020-02-04 17:39:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 83,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18609337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fitzcarraldo/pseuds/Fitzcarraldo
Summary: This is how empires collapse. It starts from within, one disgruntled Morty at a time.





	1. The End

**Author's Note:**

> This story was started on September 23, 2017.
> 
> Thank you, Rick and Morty fandom.
> 
> Extra special thanks goes to people who have personally supported me since I joined this fandom. You are numerous, too many to list, but I remember you. Though I have been quiet, I have never left. 
> 
> This story is unfinished and unpolished. Formatting may be funky and errors may be present. Please enjoy what I have; let me know your thoughts, good or bad.
> 
> Chapters will be uploaded over the next week or two as I fix formatting.

Morty sat on a divan, tracing curls of smoke as it floated toward the ceiling of a palace. Rick dragged him to a land of cat people for the equivalent of intergalactic catnip, and now he was smoking it on a plush chair as a cat girl stroked his face. Another cat girl sprawled out next to Morty, sensuously curled around a glass pipe with catnip still smoldering in the bowl. She purred in her sleep. Morty sneezed. He was allergic to cats.

“Rick, can we get out of--.” Morty was interrupted by a throaty growl on Rick’s part when the cat girl licked the stubble on the side of his face. His hand cupped the side of her neck. He was a fan of cats and women and, under the influence of catnip, couldn’t see any drawbacks to a meeting of minds, so to speak, except that his grandson was in the room. Rick turned in his direction, suddenly aware that he wasn’t alone.

Morty coughed, either from the smoke or to dispel the awkward situation.

“Why don’t we take this somewhere else?” Rick suggested with an upturned brow. The cat girl slipped off the arm of the chair to the floor and trailed her slender fingers across Rick’s jaw, then she sauntered out, tail swishing. Rick followed, high out of his mind. Morty had seen him in enough situations to know that he obeyed any woman when he was high or sloshed enough. He also knew that he had spread his seed through the dimensions with Morty in the background of most of them. Morty shuddered.

The cat next to him stirred and remembered her pipe. She took a puff from the still smoldering embers, then proffered it to Morty. He shook his head and sneezed into his elbow right afterward. He’d learned to do that after he accidentally sneezed all over a carefully constructed line of intergalactic coke, dispersing powder across the table and into the air. Rick really chewed his ass out for that one.

He was asleep on the floor, surrounded by pillows, when Rick finally returned. His companion did not return with him, and Morty’s cat had similarly left while he was lying on the fur rug, unconscious. Rick’s eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept for days, and cat scratches could be seen under the collar of his unkempt shirt.

“I think--ready to go home?” Rick had the portal gun in his hand. He sounded unusually gravelly and quiet. Morty didn’t say anything, just stood up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He stepped through the green portal into the garage. He checked the clock. It was six in the morning. Just in time to get ready for school. Then he realized he was in college now, and he was on break. And it was a Saturday. He had just done this way too much to break out of the habit of catching some sleep at the breakfast table.

“Are you okay, Morty?” Beth asked, gesturing with her fork at Morty’s ... everything. He lifted his head from the edge of the table, a red mark scoring his forehead from where he had rested. His pale complexion and his bleary eyes betrayed a lack of quality sleep and his sweater still had cat fur stuck to the front.

“Yeah, I, uh, I’m fine.” He stood up without eating. Rick hadn’t bothered to show up for breakfast, but Beth always set out food for him.

He crawled to his room and collapsed on the bed after removing the allergen-infested sweater. His skin felt hot and his hands were clammy. He hoped he wasn’t getting sick, but then he realized that this always happened when he went dimension hopping too much with Rick. Too much adventure drained his body. But whenever Rick flung open his door unannounced, with that characteristic glint in his eyes and the portal gun already in his hand, he couldn’t help but tag along, even if it killed him.

He slept all that day away and woke up at 9 PM. His parents no longer bothered to wake him up since he had moved away for college. They allowed him the freedom to sleep in as late as he wanted and to go out as he pleased. Of course, the choice was never really his to make, not in high school and certainly not now. The moment his eyes creaked open, Rick flung the door open, unannounced. He must’ve been able to hear the subtle sound of Morty’s eyes opening from slumber and took his chance to mess with Morty’s compromised reasoning. Not that it was ever able to withstand his charisma.

“What is it now, Rick?” He rubbed his eyes, which felt as dry as sandpaper.

He rambled on about something that Morty didn’t even bother deciphering. His brain was still asleep.

“I--I just want to go to sleep.” Morty flipped over away from the square of light that framed Rick’s silhouette.

“Morty--Morty, you don’t--you don’t understand. This is life changing, this is th--the future. If I can just get ahold of these crystals, I can power my work for the next century.” 

Still not moving from his huddle that faced the wall, Morty retorted, “And--and you’re going to tell me that--that the crystals are ... inside some alien’s stomach and we can’t get them with--without the authorities shooting us the whole way. Right?” He turned around to glare for a second before facing the wall again.

“No, no, this is--this is different. They’re actually part of the alien’s reproductive process, and right now is when they’re getting it on! C’mon, we gotta go now!” Rick stepped toward the bed and made to flip Morty over. Morty covered his face with the blanket and refused to acknowledge Rick’s request. 

“I’m--I’m not--I’m not going, Rick. I--I’m tired. Just want to sleep.” He flipped over with the blanket covering his entire body like a chrysalis, and it wouldn’t open until it was damn well ready to open.

“Fine, if you want to be a li--little pussy about it.” And Rick left, leaving the door wide open to the lit hallway. It illuminated a perfect square around Morty’s prone form. He didn’t sleep that night.

That was actually the end of their adventures for a long time. Morty went back to school a few days later, and Rick barely acknowledged his existence between the time he refused to the time he left to go back to college. When he gave goodbye hugs to the family, Rick was nowhere to be found, but they did hear telltale bumps and clattering in the garage. Morty peeked his head into the garage before he left but Rick was apparently too absorbed into a project that required a magnifying glass to see some components. One eye peered through the lens and the other was shut. His tongue stuck out from the corner of his mouth as he tinkered. Morty decided not to bother him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This novel was supposed to be a Big Bang 2018 entry, but life had gotten in the way. I am finally brave enough to share what I've written, even if it is not done.


	2. Secrets

Morty was a chemistry major. Despite what his grandfather, and his father, and his, well, everybody, said, he excelled in his studies. He loved everything about chemistry. And truth be told, he liked explosions as much as the next guy, but he was a bigger fan of the indicators in lab that changed color upon reacting with a certain molecule.

He tried his best to be normal, he really did. There were very few chemistry majors as it was, and even fewer that wanted to skip medical school and do graduate school instead. He was a little bit of an outlier even amongst his sciencey friends. They were more like acquaintances anyhow. Morty couldn’t relate to their struggles with girls and with class. Morty devoured chemistry class and he thought biology was boring, not hard. It was too planetary. He didn’t really have problems with school like he used to, partly because Rick no longer bothered him to go on adventures every night. He finally got enough sleep and had the opportunity to mingle with people his own age. Yet he didn’t relish the opportunity. He mostly stayed in his dorm during his free hours, playing on his DS or on his phone.

He read avidly, even though the words often danced on the page or on the screen. He wanted nothing more than to be smart like his grandfather, so he sought any source of information within reach. Wikipedia, Scientific American, Reddit, the news. Whatever was on his mind, he read about it. Despite all the effort, he could never hope to achieve what sixty years and liquid luck could achieve in a man like Rick. Still, it was his homage to a grandfather he rarely talked to anymore.

Ever since his refusal of the adventure, Rick eschewed his company in favor of alien buddies on distant planets. Usually, when Morty came to visit, Rick’s ship was gone. If it wasn’t gone, Rick would ignore him, unless it was to ask him to pass the milk or something. Eventually, Morty just stopped visiting.

Sometimes he would call the family, but usually he had called during an argument, and the conversation was straining to return to angry bickering as soon as he hung up. Sometimes he thought he could hear their barking from across the state. And Rick never, ever talked to him on the phone, even though he had his cell number.

Until one day, Morty got a text. 

Morty never got texts. He had very few friends, and the friends he had mostly texted him for homework help. But this one was actually from Rick. He opened the message in surprise.

“Hey how you doin”

Morty was in the process of forming a response when another text came through.

“Sorry wrong person”

He sighed. He deleted the message he was about to send saying he was fine. Not that that was true anyway.

Morty wasn’t fine at all. Rick was his only friend and he had ruined it. He said no to a chance to hang out and he got what he deserved. Now he was all alone in the world. But he did have one thing to fall back on: his own intelligence.

Unbeknownst to anyone except his dorm mate, who was hardly ever in the room to begin with, Morty had started tinkering on his own time. On a whim, he stole into the Radioshack that was finally in its death throes and bought out most of the good stuff during its closing sale. He had piles of breadboards, wires, capacitors, batteries, everything a budding inventor might want to play with on a weekend or on an evening after class.

His first big project was to build himself a friend. It took ingenuity and several purchases from Amazon before he got a working model. It was a small robot that could fit in a pocket, covered in an outer skin of synthetic fur. It was a mouselike creature with an inquisitive snout and big eyes. The snout was mostly for show, but the eyes could actually process visual input and interpret it. It could adapt to situations, but was a little bit smarter than an actual mouse, or at least easier to control. He could utter voice commands that would command it to stay still, power down or power on, and charge. The last command would allow the mouse to locate its charging pad on a flat surface and sit on it to recharge. It was mostly for his entertainment, but he grew to love it like a pet. For fear of breaking the poor thing, he usually kept it in his dorm on its charging pad.

Maybe he did inherit something good from his grandfather.

With the good must come the bad, and he knew to avoid alcohol and drugs, lest he become an addict like his mom and his granddad. The idea of altering his conscious scared him, truthfully. With a lowering of inhibitions could come a steep price. He had secrets to keep that went beyond that of intergalactic recipes for fried chicken. No, he had something much darker that he had repressed since high school.

Morty tried to like girls. Morty tried to like guys. Both seemed to meet with failure. The dating scene was a joke. Few people cared for his scrawniness, and absolutely none of the few remaining contenders cared to talk about science. Surely, girls liked him as a friend because he was nonthreatening. And boys either liked him because he was easy to pick on or else he was a perfect twink, whatever that meant. The type of boys who signified the latter were not his type. He wanted someone a little ... older. 

He was more into his aging science professors than he was the people his age. He preferred guys. Sometimes a redhead would make him turn around, do a double take, but usually it was the “silver foxes” in business casual dress that caught his eye. But by far the most attractive of his professors was his freshman chemistry professor. Especially during lab, when he donned his lab coat and meandered through the room to check his students’ progress. Lab was usually a breeze for Morty, but something about his professor in a lab coat made him fumble more than usual. Especially when he leaned over his shoulder to check on him specifically. He could actually smell aftershave on him, and it made him shudder. Maybe the resemblance was too much like -- no. Not that.

When he sat for lectures, he stalked the teacher with his eyes as he wrote on the board. The way his long arms reached high to write at the top of the board, moving the shoulder blades underneath his sweater. Or when he paced back and forth when he explained something complicated or long winded, the way his lanky legs carried him, the way his lean arms gestured. And sometimes, when he finished explaining something particularly complex or when he was deep in thought, he would run his hands through his thick gray hair. Morty could barely focus on the topic at hand with that. It made him think of -- no, it didn’t.

***

Rick ran his fingers through his thick gray hair. He wasn’t actually doing anything important when Morty poked his head through the door. He just wanted to look busy.

The second he left, he fished his glass pipe from one of his inner pockets. He removed a book from his bookcase and flipped open the cover. Inside, the pages had been hollowed out, leaving a compartment for a bag of weed. This wasn’t catnip level, but it was stuff he cultivated in a pocket dimension and refused to tell anyone about, not even Morty. Morty disapproved of drugs, and Rick didn’t want a kid lecturing him about how his dick would fall off if he smoked. 

He packed the bowl carefully with his thin fingers, then took out a lighter from yet another pocket. He took a long drag and held his breath impossibly long before letting it out, watching smoke reach for the fluorescent bulbs above. Hopefully Jerry would refrain from bitching him out for smoking in the house. But this part of the house was his castle. He did what he wanted.

He was getting too old for this shit. His human shield that he tried so hard not to get attached to had now started studying at the university across the state. Watching his grandson actually succeed in higher education made him feel proud. And old.

Every time he moved in his chair, his bones creaked in protest like a squeaky door. Not even the dimension with all the young, attractive, immortal women had a cure for aging once it had already set in. He was a hinge without the hope for oil.

Sometime in the middle of the first semester, it hit Rick that Morty was getting too old to tag along with him. He needed a chance to be a kid and hang out with people his own age. He needed a chance to do drugs off a hooker’s back, get a girlfriend, lose his virginity. He tried to dispel the last thought with a long draw from the pipe. For some reason it didn’t sit right with him. Maybe it was the obvious reaction to thinking about the child of your child having sex, or it was something worse. No, it wasn’t something worse. That was all it was. Just an appropriate response to thinking about your kid’s sex life.

After Morty’s refusal to extract crystals from aliens in heat, he realized he needed to give Morty space to grow up normally. As much as he hated to admit it, he had a soft spot for him. He maybe even actually cared about his family. He tried to drink and smoke it away but the swelling in his heart when he saw Morty never quite went down. And he took aspirin every morning to counteract cardiac hypertrophy.

Without Morty’s shielding effects, traveling through space became downright dangerous. Not that he was one to shy away from danger, but he had enough self preservation instinct to keep his excursions to a minimum. That left him nothing to do but smoke, drink, and halfheartedly work on gadgets that he didn’t have the opportunity to use.

He was no spring chicken, but the marijuana made his head swim. He rested his face in his hands, fingers gripping his hair like a lifeline to reality. He was glad no one could see him.


	3. How to Be a Human Being

Morty was going on a date. He found a receptive girl sitting by herself in chemistry class. She actually chatted him up and now here they were, in a local coffee shop on campus. He didn’t expect it be serious, so he came in jeans and a T-shirt. She wore a beautiful knee length dress, aqua green with white lace, leggings, and brown boots. Strike one, Morty.

She didn’t seem to mind, however. She laid her hand on his across the small table. Her hands were professionally done with French tips. She was really in it to win it. Morty gulped.

“A--Anna, right?” Smooth.

Anna smiled, unperturbed. “Yes, Morty.” She batted her long feminine eyelashes and asked, “So, I’ve seen you in class, but I want to know what you do when you’re not in class. You must be pretty smart since you’re taking chemistry.” She turned up the flattery, making Morty turn slightly red.

“Y--yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess you could say that, heh.” Morty kicked himself internally.

“What do you do in your free time?”

“Oh, well, actually, I--uh, I like to ... make things. Like this.” Morty pulled out his phone, flipping through pictures until he came upon the picture of his mouse in the palm of his hand, when he had first gotten it to respond to him. He had been ecstatic.

“That’s a mouse.” Anna crinkled her nose. 

“B--but, the cool thing is, it’s actually an automaton.” Picking up speed and shedding the stutter to some extent, he explained how he came to make it using some spare parts from Radioshack. She stared at him dumbstruck.

“So, uh, what do you -- what do you like to do in your free time?” He smiled, but he felt that it was mere convention pulling the corners of his mouth up like a puppet. He sweated underneath his collar and tugged it away from his neck with a crooked finger.

She rattled on about the usual white girl hobbies. She loved to travel, she loved to laugh, she loved her pets that she visited at her parents’ house, she had a habit of buying shoes and purses with her allowance. Morty nodded at the appropriate times, but he couldn’t really hide the fact that he had no social skills whatsoever. Thanks to constant adventures with his grandpa, his social circle collapsed and his conversational ability with anyone that didn’t have Rick’s cutting sense of humor atrophied.

Miraculously, Anna wasn’t turned away. “You’re a really good listener. So many guys just talk about sports and going to the gym all the time. But you’re different. You’re really special.” Morty turned redder and steam must have been escaping from the neck of his shirt by now. She glanced at her phone. “It’s getting late. I better get going. We should do this again sometime.”

Now Morty was left dumbstruck. Clearly the key to women was to just shut up and listen. Funny enough, that’s one of the first things he learned with Rick.

Meeting up with Anna became a regular thing, something he looked forward to after a long day of class. He could unwind with her small fingers playing through his hair and her voice in his ear talking about something inane that he nodded at occasionally. It was perfect, yet something was missing. The relationship felt so soft. His whole life was filmed in soft focus. His mind was soothed by a siren’s song, but he wondered when she would turn and bite. Whenever Rick got super drunk, he would act like a caring relative, pat his head, talk about the past in a quiet, gravelly voice, but the day afterward, his bloodshot eyes would warn him to stay away. He could do that, he could bite with his eyes and a huff through his nostrils. Anna never did that. She was always a pillow for Morty to lay his head on. And he hated it.

That didn’t stop him from admitting to his relationship with a hint of pride when Jerry teased him one weekend. Rick couldn’t make fun of him for being a lonely virgin anymore. Now he was just a virgin, but at least he was no longer lonely.

Rick squinted at him, for once seemingly at a loss for words, but he quickly overcame his hesitation.

“So Mo--Morty, have you, have you made it to thUUUIRd base yet?” He punctuated his question with an accidental flinging of food from his fork across the table.

“Dad!”

Morty didn’t respond, just turned red. He was good at that. Like a chameleon, he changed color with his mood. Around Rick, he either turned red from anger or embarrassment. Maybe once in a lifetime, he managed to hold his own, but not today.

“I’ll -- I’ll have you know, R--Rick, we’re taking it sl--slow.” He glared at Rick next to him, whose elbow was nearly in his plate of food. He nearly used his whole body to shove Rick’s arm away from his space.

“Hey, Morty, don’t get ups--don’t get pissy with me because your little _girlfriend_ ” -- he spat the word, along with some spittle -- “doesn’t think your dick is big enough.” 

Rick and his grandson were having a full on glaring contest at this point. The rest of the household felt distinctly uncomfortable. 

Jerry, apologetic that he brought the subject up, tried to change it. “So, have you been to any football games, Morty?” He had the same nervous habit of tugging at his collar with a finger.

Rick, refusing to acknowledge Jerry’s existence, got up from the table. He had sown enough chaos for one night. Banging could be heard through the garage door soon afterward.

The dinner conversation jumped in fits and starts from then on. They tried to avoid the topic of their son’s strained relationship with his grandpa, acting proud when he told them about his good grades and pretending to be disappointed when he said he hadn’t been to the school’s rec center yet.

After dinner, Morty dejectedly headed up to his old bedroom, but then he realized he was pissed. He headed back down the stairs and burst into the garage. He immediately started on a tirade.

“Why can’t you --!” But then he stopped when he realized what he was seeing.

Rick sat perched on his ratty swivel chair, knees brought up to his chest and one arm wrapped around his legs. The other hung to the floor, a bottle of gin in his free hand. His head rested on the tops of his knees. He stared off into space at a point slightly above his box of time travel stuff.

“R--Rick?” Morty was honestly surprised that Rick was still that flexible, but he refrained from asking about his yoga routine just yet. He stepped closer when Rick didn’t move to acknowledge his presence. “H--hey, are you -- are you okay?” He hesitantly put a hand on his grandfather’s back. It felt like touching a cobra, but the cobra didn’t turn around and sink his fangs in him like he expected. When he felt the nubs of his spine through his coat, he realized how old and frail his grandpa looked. He had lost weight since Morty had graduated high school, and he didn’t have any weight to lose back then either. Rick finally turned his head. His eyes were ringed with red. They were tired of seeing things.

“What--what do you want?” The question lacked the usual energy.

“No--nothing, I guess.” Morty leaned against the ship and they existed in a silent limbo.

“Are you ... upset that I’m in college?”

Rick forced out a derisive “no” but it hit the floor with a thud. It sat between them, taking up the space that the silence took up before. 

Morty inhaled. “Do you, uh, want to ... go s--somewhere tomorrow?” He gave a conciliatory grin. He had extended the white flag. All Rick had to do was accept it.

The earth and Morty held their breath. “Fine.” They both audibly exhaled at the same time.

Rick uncurled himself from the chair with a cracking of joints. He gripped the neck of the bottle with white knuckles, careful to keep it upright, as he headed for the door.

“Well, I’m going to bed. See you tomorrow.”

Morty watched him go but didn’t follow him. He breathed in the smell of home. His arms erupted in goosebumps.

***

They were heading for the ice cream planet. Morty watched the expanse of space from the passenger window. No landmarks in sight, just inky blackness hugging a tiny vehicle hurtling faster than light. Despite the speed at which they traveled, it still took about thirty minutes to get anywhere noteworthy from Earth. This gave Morty time to study Rick in peace.

Two bony hands guided the steering wheel, connected to long arms in a stained white jacket. His hair wasn’t as ... wild as usual. Could hair get tired? He had definitely lost weight. He looked nearly skeletal. His jaw was hard and defined, and his eyes still spat icy fire. And they were burning right down into his soul.

Morty whipped his head forward, peering intently into the inky void, seeking his escape.

Rick cracked into a grin. “Can’t help but to admire your grandpa, huh?” For some reason, Morty blushed at this. That’s not what he was doing, he told himself. He was studying, recording in his brain the qualitative data that proved that Rick was not taking good care of himself anymore. He thought about his yellowed teeth. He really doubted he bothered to brush his teeth every day. If he didn’t eat, why bother brushing your teeth? Alien pussy was his sustenance and alcohol was his mouthwash. No room for personal hygiene when you’re covered in juices. Morty started to scowl as his mind wandered where it shouldn’t.

His grandpa took it as a reaction to his teasing remark. “Aww, lighten up, pal.” He punched his grandson on the arm. “Look, we’re almost here!”

Going to the ice cream planet was Morty’s idea. Sure, he liked ice cream, but he really wanted to see Rick eat. He was scared he would starve to death. Maybe he was just getting old and frail, but somehow Morty thought he had a hand in this. Maybe without his protection, Rick had caught an alien parasite that was sucking up his nutrients. Or he was just depressed. But he couldn’t see Rick being depressed, ever, so he chose to believe the former for his sanity.

The planet finally loomed into sight. They parked next to the singular ice cream shop that dominated the entire surface. It was immense. Morty got so hungry that he didn’t ever make it far into the place before he stopped to order something, but he heard trains deeper in the building that led to exotic flavors. He just liked chocolate, so that’s all he ever ordered. Sometimes he added chocolate syrup. Rick liked Oreos in his ice cream, which for some reason were hidden somewhere far into the shop. It was a ten minute walk to find cookies and cream. Morty sighed in relief when they finally found the flavor tucked behind some weird fruit sorbets. Rick requested a silver mixing bowl and demanded intact Oreos to add to his ice cream. He proceeded to wolf the entire bowl down without stopping. This took about five minutes, and Morty didn’t even touch his ice cream. He was genuinely impressed.

The spoon hit the bottom of the cleaned out bowl with a clatter, and he belched. In China that was a sign of respect for a delicious meal. It also appeared to be good manners in space. He slumped forward with his head in his arms, fast asleep.

Thirty minutes later, they left, Morty dragging Rick as if he were shit drunk, but he was just full and lazy. It took him fifteen minutes to wake him up and fifteen more to convince him that he didn’t need any more, and yes, that he needed to pay for it.

Rick set the ship to autopilot and reclined in his chair with his feet propped up on the locked steering wheel and his arms behind his head. He had probably gained ten pounds and Morty had certainly gained a few while watching him eat. He wondered with a little unease how long it had been since he had really eaten. At the sound of snoring, he thought how long it had been since he had really slept. And was he actually sober today? Alcohol was usually heavy on his breath, but today it was just aftershave. He smelled clean, maybe even ... content? Could you smell content?

The next day, Morty went back to school, and Rick went back to drinking.


	4. There's No Sound in Outer Space

Morty lay on the twin size dorm bed, tracing the cracks in the ceiling with his eyes. One arm was propped under his head like a pillow, and the other hand rested on his chest. His phone buzzed, probably Anna recounting an uninteresting story. Out of charity, he read the message. It was from Rick.

“Meet me at the moose”

The Moose was the coffee shop where he had first met Anna outside of class. He doubted that had any significance. It was a pretty popular meeting place around here. Since the message had no time frame, he assumed it meant right now. Rick was pretty impatient. He slipped his old tennis shoes on and headed out.

He _groaned_ when he saw the ship literally parked outside on top of another car, as if he had parked it in a hurry. As usual, he had no consideration for other people. He ran inside just as a man stomped out, yelling on his cellphone that a ship had just squished his car. 

Rick sat on an armchair in the corner, watching Morty intently. He sprang up when he entered and met him in two bounds. He grabbed his arm hard. “MoOOORrty! Morty. Come on, before that guy comes back in. He’s--he’s pretty pissed.” He took a draft from his flask as he ran towards the ship outside all while dragging Morty by the arm. They escaped into the air and zipped toward space and out of the atmosphere. Morty watched the guy shaking his fist at them as they ascended. Morty panicked.

“Wh--what’s going on, R--Rick? Where--where are we going?” He stared out the window at Earth shrinking under him.

“Thank--Thank God we got out of thUUUGHre. He was really--really getting on my nerves.” Morty stared incredulously.

“You squished his car! Of course he’s pissed! Oh, Rick, they’re g--gonna know that you’re rel--related to me, and--and Anna will break up with me, and--.”

“Good. Now shut up and listen, you li--little punk. I got a text from my guy in the Fourth Quadrant and he’s got a biiig load this time, okay, so--so you’re gonna have to do me a solid.” Morty gulped.

“Did you bring l--lube?”

Rick paused for a second before he caught on. “No, not that this time! I promise, this’ll be eEEEEasy. After we stuff the shit in the back, we--we’re gonna unload it at my boy’s nightclub next galaxy over.”

“Okay, but--.”

“Shut up. The deal is, we gotta sneak up to the VIP room, but there’s a--an entrance fee. And neither of us are -- OURP -- pretty girls, so--so we’re gonna have to pretend to be a couple.”

Morty, for the second time in five minutes, stared incredulously. “What? Why?”

“Because, Morty, there’s a couple’s discount! Duh!” He knocked a fist against his head two times in mockery of Morty’s slow wits.

Morty huddled in his chair and hugged his stomach. He felt a strange flutter threatening to come out. He chalked it up to jitters. It had been a long time since they did any smuggling.

In the Fourth Quadrant, which is the name for the lower right section of the Milky Way, they loaded square packages wrapped with twine into the trunk. They were very heavy and Morty struggled to keep up. Meanwhile Rick flung packages carelessly into the back, his thin frame belying strength. His customers, so to speak, stood guard in a circle around the ship.

Rick dusted off his hands. The last of the packages were in the trunk. They were ready to move. Morty crawled into the passenger side while Rick finished the transaction. Once he got in, he sat in the driver’s seat like a king on his throne and he fanned the money out in Morty’s face. “We’re rich now, baby! Now let’s get outta here.”

They headed to Andromeda. Rick stuck the money in the glove box and locked it. They approached a planet surrounded by a purple haze. Glittering red lights peered through the fog on the night side of the planet, which is where they were landing. Truthfully, it looked like one big red light district as they parked in a garage next to much more expensive looking ships.

“Okay, we gotta sneak into VIP and they’ll handle the rest. You and me might have to act cutesy, okay? Don’t fuck this up for me, Mo--Morty.” Morty’s stomach jumped at the sound of “cutesy.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to act like he was in a cutesy romantic relationship with his own grandfather. Rick shotgunned some liquid courage, and they headed toward the club.

The line wasn’t too long tonight. It must be a work night, Morty thought. As they inched toward the bouncer, Rick grabbed Morty’s hand. Morty marveled at the contact, even if it was only for show. Rick’s hand was calloused, bony, and warm, and a little clammy. It enveloped Morty’s tiny hand, but the touch was very light and reluctant. It was just for show.

The bouncer looked like a gargoyle with an underbite and two sets of buff arms and two sets of beady yellow eyes. Fitting considering his position as a guard. One set of his eyes remained closed, but the lower pair surveyed the “couple.” “Couple, eh? That’ll be 750.” Rick grumbled and let go of Morty’s hand, rummaging for some money.

“Here.” He handed the bouncer the money.

The gargoyle sniffed the money to check its authenticity, and he let them pass.

Smoke suffused the warm air inside the club. Under the red and blue lights, the writhing mass of aliens looked like one gigantic monster.

“C’mon, we got buUUUSiness to do.” He led Morty by the hand to the back. Morty again marveled that he was even this intimate with his grandfather. It was like touching a lion. Another gargoyle guarded the outlet of a spiral staircase that led to parts unknown. Rick muttered something unintelligible to the guard and he stepped to the side to let them pass, not without a grunt and a snort of hot air in Morty’s face, of course.

They traversed the stairs, and Morty felt trepidation at what he might see. 

The stairs opened onto a hallway, at the end of which was another door. Rick pulled it open with confidence. He had obviously visited this place before.

The VIP room was lavishly furnished with fur pelts on the floor and walls and comfortable, modern seating. No one was here except a bartender cleaning a glass behind the bar and three creatures lounging in the middle of a long couch in front of a window.

Something like Jabba the Hutt wearing a silk shirt sprawled out on the couch with two females at his side. “Rick!” it said warmly.

“I got your order. It’s in my ship.” Whenever Rick had business, Morty could hear him straining to control his stutter and speak slowly and deliberately. 

“Good, good, I’ll have my boys get it.” He poked on his phone, presumably alerting his “boys” to get the stuff out of the back of their ship. They must have agreed beforehand the exact location to park in the garage.

“So who’s this pretty thing?” Jabba the Hutt gestured toward Morty.

Rick first laid his hand on his shoulder, but it slipped to his upper back for believability. “This is my -- partner, Morty.” Morty grinned sheepishly. He started to sweat. He resisted the urge to stick his finger in his collar. Rick’s hand on his back burned and sent cold shivers down Morty’s spine at the same time.

“How long have you two been together?”

“Oh, I’d say about -- six years now.” 

Jabba the Hutt looked shocked. “And you never brought him around before?”

“Well, you know business gets in the way.”

Jabba’s hand wandered up the thigh of one of the girls. “Why don’t you stay awhile? Have a drink?” He waved toward the bar and the shrimp looking creature manning it.

Rick broke out into a full smile. “Don’t mind if I do.” He bowed graciously and nearly jumped for the bar. Morty dutifully followed him to a stool. He felt a little bit like an accessory. That was usual.

Rick was downing shots on his way to being sloshed when Morty noticed Jabba staring at their backs. Morty elbowed Rick as he was about to throw back another drink and Rick followed Morty’s eyes.

“Why don’t you two ... relax? I’m sure your little friend is dying for your attention.” At this point Mr. Hutt was straight up fondling one of his girls. She had her eyes closed appreciatively. 

Rick leaned forward and whispered hot into Morty’s ear, “Don’t freak out and follow my lead.” He took the opportunity to intertwine Morty’s fingers in his own. Morty swallowed around a lump that suddenly formed in his throat. Rick turned Morty’s head a little and planted a light kiss on his forehead. The spot where his lips touched tingled. He whispered again, “He likes to watch. I’ve done this before. He throws in some good money for these little shows.” Morty unconsciously bristled at the idea of Rick fondling some alien but he didn’t have long to think because dear God Rick scraped his teeth against the shell of his ear. His breath hitched and he stifled a noise. Rick’s fingers were still trapping Morty’s, and his other hand was on his back, digging into the fabric slightly. Morty fought a hot wave of shame and some small electric tingle that went through his body when he felt fingers trailing along his spine.

Teeth sank into the crook of Morty’s neck and he groaned before he could stop himself. Blood rushed straight downward when he did it again higher up on his neck. He’d have to sort this out in therapy for sure. He shook as a tongue traveled up the rest of his neck to his jaw, and then teeth nibbled on his earlobe. Tears started to well up in Morty’s eyes and he shut them tight. He gripped the front of Rick’s coat hard, knuckles white. He panted, nearly hyperventilating.

“Are you okay?” Whispered into his ear. Imperceptibly, he shook his head no, but his grandfather perceived it. Jabba the Hutt was preoccupied with his women, snogging one and groping the other one. Rick’s eyes glittered overbright in the dark. He mouthed, _Let’s go_. He didn’t have to be told twice. They slipped out through the door they came in. They padded toward the ship, subdued by the night’s events and in contrast to the loud party still going on downstairs.

They sat in the ship in silence as it headed home on autopilot. They both stared forward. Only two small blue lights in the ship illuminated their outlines. Morty eyed Rick’s eyes that still glittered strangely like they did back in the VIP room. They were too _bright_. Morty felt dark inside. Rick burned with an inner light that snuffed Morty’s out. Morty, in imitation of his grandpa, ran his fingers through his hair, mussing it up. The gesture was comforting. He felt cold and alone even though his grandpa sat right next to him.


	5. Back to Basics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for not posting as frequently as I had promised. Life is a needy bitch sometimes and it required my attention. I hope you are enjoying the story so far. Have a beautiful day, my lovelies.

Rick, adding onto the drinks from the club, drank a lot that night. He tried to wash the taste of Morty’s skin out of his mouth. He showered in scalding water to wash away the feeling of Morty’s hands. Upstairs, Morty did the same, but the lingering feeling of his grandpa’s teeth on his ear and neck didn’t go away. He felt like the trail of his tongue on his neck should have left a bright fluorescent slime. It did appear that the teeth marks left bruises. Thanks to his girlfriend, Anna, he could explain it away, but the shame coiled around his stomach and constricted it.

Morty went back to school, and Rick went back to not eating.

Morty went on dates, and Rick drank himself to sleep.

Both of them, unbeknownst to the other, were falling into disrepair. Anna shared her first “I love you,” but Morty couldn’t reciprocate it. His classes went fine, but they weren’t fun anymore. He skipped at least one class a week, especially his early morning classes. He chose to cling to sleep when he could. His dreams were feverish, dark, and hot with the feeling of his grandpa’s mouth on his and his hands wrapped around his waist, thumbs digging into his hips. Sleep was no refuge, but at least he wasn’t awake thinking about his grandpa fucking him in class. He had no idea what was going on.

Rick didn’t think much at all anymore, and when he did, it was about Morty. About his salty skin under his tongue, about kissing him in the blue dark, about bending him over his workbench, about--. He took a drink and the thoughts vanished again. He passed his days sitting in the garage staring off into space, drunk and sometimes high out of his head. He knew exactly what was going on. He was a sick pervert.

He could easily have gotten away without manhandling Morty like that, but he couldn’t resist. Something urged him forward like a spike digging into his back. And Morty -- Morty reciprocated. His body responded in all the right ways. And he had to have more. This line of thinking usually led to him retching above the toilet after drinking far more than even he could handle. Many days he woke up with the cold porcelain pressing against his forehead. He had to protect Morty -- from himself.

That’s why he cut the adventures off the second time. Morty needed time to grow as a human being before Rick irreversibly fucked him up. He knew he wouldn’t be able to resist forever. It might already be too late. One night, when the whole house was asleep, he punched his leg hard enough to leave an angry bruise that spread across his thigh. He practically bared his teeth at Beth when she expressed worry at his limp. He could feel his age and he didn’t want to. The bruise took a long time to clear up completely and when he was tired, he could feel his limp come back like a bad habit. Not as bad as the drinking that followed him through the dimensions, but it made him rage at his enfeebled body. It was betraying him.

He didn’t bother coming to family meals. He just dug around in the fridge for leftovers whenever the urge hit him, which wasn’t often. He dropped weight again. He wasn’t as far gone as Christian Bale in _The Machinist_ , but he was getting there. He didn’t have weight to spare. He thought it might be best if he ended it, but he certainly didn’t tell anyone that. He’d seen the inside of psychiatric hospitals and he’d rather not repeat it. Yes, if he wanted to end it, he had one shot to do it right. But he was Rick-fucking-Sanchez, he did everything right the first time. That thought had been kicking around his head ever since he first sucked dick for drugs. He avoided the idea of dying by his own hand until preying on his grandson brought it back. He thought he would give it time. Just a little time, maybe he’ll be taken out naturally. Clearly his mind was betraying him as well.

***

Morty broke up with Anna. He couldn’t keep up the farce forever. He never told her what happened with his grandpa because he knew she would express genuine concern, but it was more complicated than it sounded. He _wanted Rick_ , a man sixty years his senior. Not to mention it was his own grandfather. The whole incident at the nightclub was probably Rick taking things too far for the sake of a quick buck, but he wanted to believe that it was real, that he really felt passion behind his actions and wasn’t just a cold, calculating danger hound. That he really loved Morty.

He pushed ahead in his classes, grinding for that degree. He would prove to the world, to the universe, that he was smart like his grandfather. Despite everything, he still looked up to him for his good traits. The only friend in the world, since Rick and he had again stopped talking, was his mouse. He kept it in the shirt pocket of his button-down and he pulled it out when he was alone and down. The mouse was the only link to some semblance of genius and creativity. To him it meant nothing, but to any normal person, it was a work of a master. He couldn’t build a portal gun from scratch, nor could he reverse engineer a dog intelligence helmet, so to him, the mouse was just a pet that he built because no living creature on Earth wanted anything to do with him. Simple stuff, all that could be expected from a simple mind.

***

It was summer break. Morty had his few belongings in the whole world in the trunk of his car, and he drove back home humming tunes from the Top 40s station. He shared some tight hugs with the family and then he took a deep breath and opened the garage door.

He had mentally prepared his script. He would extend the truce flag again, forget anything ever happened. Get some ice cream, maybe, or go to one of those casinos that lay just beyond Federation control that offered free beer while you gambled. He knew of one they visited that sat on an asteroid, and it was really hard to get to it because it was ... in the middle of an asteroid belt ....

At the sound of the door opening, Rick spun around like a spooked animal. He was in the process of affixing a helmet to a metal arm and the turning of the doorknob nearly caused him to knock the whole apparatus over. He steadied it while glaring at the intruder.

“Uh, Rick? You look like -- you look like shit.”

He deflated when he heard that. Rub it in why don’t you?

“Look, Morty, I’m seventy years old, I’m not posing on S--Sports Illustrated anymore.”

“Yeah, but--.” He was pretty sure that was vomit trailing down the front of his shirt. “You’re -- you’re gross!” He waved his hands wildly in his direction in an effort to encompass everything, not that there was much to comprehend anymore. His coat hung limply on his shoulders like it had lost its pride. He looked like one of those homeless guys who sit on busy streets harassing women. He just needed a few more cigarettes and a few less teeth.

“I didn’t have sex with your grandmother just so you could lecture me, y--you little shit.” He went back to messing with his helmet hair dryer or whatever it was. Morty almost got a word in before he was interrupted.

“Go play with Jerry, I’m bOUUUUsy.”

He left it at that.

***

A natural disaster pulled Morty from dream to reality and out of bed onto the floor. Strong hands detangled Morty’s legs from the blankets. Rick yanked him to his feet. “Shut up, we gotta go,” he hissed. 

“Wh--what’s--?”

“I said shut up!” They stumbled in the dark toward the garage and the ship, which already hummed with life. Something told Morty it wasn’t just a midnight booty call that had Rick up and at ‘em in the blue dark. They positively shot out of the door into the openness of space. Morty peered nervously out of his window. He had left his pants and shoes back home. He shivered in his underwear on the pleather seat.

“Wh--what’s going on, Rick?”

“The--they’re after us, Morty, th--they found us out. It’s not safe back home anymore.”

“They what? Who’s they?”

“The Federation, idiot! I don’t know how they tr--tracked me down again, but I’m blaming you.”

Morty was indignant. He sat up straighter in his seat, about to retort, when a shell hit the bow of the ship. It knocked the ship off balance and a trail of smoke followed the ship’s fast descent.

“Shit! Shit!”

Morty didn’t dare turn his head, just braced for impact with the nearest enemy ship or chunk of space debris. He shut his eyes tight.

“I didn’t want to have to do this ....”

Morty, his eyes still shut, felt rather than heard a rip in the space-time continuum. Rick had opened a portal that the entire ship tumbled through. They skidded on hard ground before coming to a stop in front of a metropolis. They had landed on the outskirts of the Citadel.

It was back to basics. Ricks and Mortys for a hundred years.


	6. A Fully Functional Society Composed of Only Two People

In contrast to the darkness of space and Earth, the Citadel shone in a perpetual yellow light. It was a testament to the ingenuity of a million government-hating Ricks that stopped their self-hatred and bickering long enough to build an oasis far from the Federation’s rule. It was a fully functional society composed of two personalities: Ricks and Mortys. Morty found it to be pretty creepy. At this point, he should have gotten used to seeing versions of himself in different positions in society, but it unnerved him nevertheless. Some people theorized that if you met a clone of yourself, you wouldn’t be able to recognize it as a version of you, but that was not true. Morty knew damn well that he was watching versions of himself and his grandfather perform every function of a first world society. His grandpa, as always, showed no reaction besides scowling at versions of himself that happened to catch his eye.

Morty had never actually seen the Citadel before, only heard of it in passing when his grandpa started rambling about space and the government. He painted it as a society that became what it once hated: a bureaucracy plagued by inefficiencies and ruled by a select few Ricks that didn’t deserve their rank. And now they had taken refuge in its walls. Whatever Rick had gotten himself into, it must have been bad if it warranted escaping from the jaws of one government into the mouth of another. Rick detested government of any kind. At the very least, he detested the law enforcement side of any government. He had so far exploited every loophole available to him in Earth’s laws and the Federation’s mandates. He was his own lawyer, and Morty was certain that they would get in a similar amount of trouble here. But he wasn’t so certain that Rick could outsmart a bunch of other Ricks who all wanted him in prison if he mired himself in criminal charges during their stay in the Citadel. Eventually his defenses would slip and the Ricks would tear him apart, maybe literally. Even if they were bureaucrats, they were still Ricks. Morty swallowed his doubt for now. He had to trust; it was his only hope.

Rick found a towing company to drag their totaled ship to the shop, leaving them to trek on foot through the city until they found a hotel. The feat of engineering that the founders performed meant the city was perpetually the perfect temperature. Morty thanked them because he was still in his underwear and bare feet. A few Mortys pitied him with their big eyes as the Ricks jeered at his scrawny form. Morty was smart enough not to cross his own grandfather, much less grandfathers from other dimensions that might not be as kind, so he kept his mouth shut when they laughed at him.

“H--hey, c--can we find a cl--clothing store or something? I think versions of you are laughing at me.”

Rick huffed but obliged, heading toward an auspiciously placed store on the strip. The Morty behind the counter helped him find a pair of pants cheap. Apparently, Ricks liked to pants Mortys either by yanking down their pants with their hands or by vaporization of the pants themselves, so the shopkeeper had seen quite a few half-naked kids come through. He also had tissues hidden behind the counter in case they came in crying, which happened often. He didn’t have any shoes, but at least Morty wasn’t exposed.

“Th--thanks.”

“No problem. We have to stick together.” The owner bolstered Morty with a smile.

“Heh, th--that guy was pretty nice, wasn’t he, Rick?” He grunted in response. His attention was attracted by a motel a few blocks away.

The Morty behind this counter acted decidedly less friendly. He fiddled with his phone and paid no attention until Rick, impatient, barked that they needed a room for a few nights. This Morty barked back that there was only one room left, single bed.

“What payment method will you be using today, _sir_?” The _sir_ dripped with disdain.

“Card.” The desk clerk swiped it from Rick’s hand and entered the information on the computer.

“Here you go.” Instead of handing the card back, he shoved it across the desk toward Rick’s outstretched hand. “Enjoy your stay, _sir_.”

As they walked up the stairs: “C--can you believe that little fuck? Kids these days, no manners.”

They found their room on the second floor in a state of neglect. The comforter had an obvious tear on the bottom, and smoke stains crawled up the peeling wallpaper. It would have to do until they found a more permanent living situation. At least it appeared clean otherwise. No pill bottles under the bed, no needles in between the sheets. Morty checked. While Morty fastidiously inspected the room, Rick plopped down on the bed with his clothes and shoes still on. He put his arms behind his head and got comfortable as he tracked Morty with his eyes.

Morty felt his neck hairs prickle and he turned around. “What?”

“Nothing.” Rick grinned. “Bring me the remote.” Morty tossed it to him. He crawled onto the bed next to his grandfather and watched the screen flick from channel to channel. Interdimensional cable was included, according to the welcome brochure that lay on the nightstand. He stopped it on some alien _How It’s Made_ show and then promptly fell asleep. Since Rick took up three-fourths of the bed, Morty had to squeeze in uncomfortably close. He felt like a lamb cuddling a sleeping lion. He shivered uncontrollably and curled into himself.

***

Rick’s eyes opened suddenly, like the eyes of old people and fugitives tended to do; he slept light. They had shifted in their sleep so that they were spooning, his arms around his grandson’s waist anchoring them in place. Morty breathed evenly, apparently still asleep despite the artificial light shining right in his face. Against his better judgment -- was he really going to do this? He squeezed him closer. The height difference made it so that Rick’s chin could rest on the top of Morty’s head. He sighed and pressed his nose into his son’s hair, ruffling it with his breath. He still smelled like the shampoo from home. In this dimension, Ricks and Mortys only had each other. There was no home anymore, not for a while anyway.

Rick didn’t realize that Morty had woken up too.

***

After a solid fourteen hours or so, they both woke up for real. They found themselves even more tangled up together than earlier. One of Rick’s legs was trapped between Morty’s, and Morty’s arms overlapped his grandfather’s, which hugged his waist tightly. They scrambled away from each other and they both ran their hands through their hair, a nervous gesture that reflected their lack of composure.

“Takeout?” Morty nodded.

Morty, still biologically a teenager, ate his Chinese food without chewing. Thank goodness they had cheap Chinese food in space. It was actually an unusually subservient Rick that dropped their food off. Rick ate one handed, scrolling through search results, trying to find a place to live. The bands on his phone picked up the signal from the towers around the city, which allowed him to peruse local listings without any trouble.

“Hey, Morty, here’s a place.” He turned the screen in Morty’s direction. He nodded, mouth full of food. He muffled a “Looks good.”

He said when he swallowed, “Is it e--expensive?”

“Don’t worry about that, Grandpa’s got money,” he said in an unusual display of reassurance.

“The--then let’s go.”

“Can’t, it’s too far away. Gotta wait for the ship to get outta the shop first. Got a call from the mechanic, it’ll be a few days. So get comfortable with spooning your grandpa.” Morty choked. He laughed at his stricken face; he was so easy to mess with.

“We can ask for a room with two beds if you want.” Since Rick was stone cold sober, he didn’t stumble over his words. It was almost nice except for the crushing agony of despair that he abandoned his family for a second time, a promise to Beth he vowed never to break.

Morty, however, stumbled over his words, syllables tumbling over the cliff of his mouth. “N--no, I mean, if--if you want to, I--I’m okay.” He punctuated his eloquence with a conciliatory smile. A blush crept across his features when his grandpa wouldn’t stop staring at him.

“Wh--what?”

“Nothing,” he said, “just admiring your way with words.” His face adopted the usual good-humored sneer.

“L--leave me alone.”

***

After two more nights of unintentional snuggling and embarrassment, they finally got the use of their ship back. Since they had no belongings in the entire world left to them besides their clothes, their cellphones, and their vehicle, the move in to the furnished apartment was easy. It had two bedrooms and a shared bathroom. A couch and an interdimensional cable box resting on the floor occupied the living room. It was all they needed for now. Well, except for a TV to plug the cable box into. They’d still have to go shopping for housebreaking stuff like soap, but after spending all day dodging air traffic through the city center and honking at inconsiderate Ricks and really slow moving Mortys, they decided to just forgo washing their hands for some quiet time sitting on opposite ends of the couch on their phones. Spending time like a family.

Morty turned his head, thought about asking how millions of Mortys and Ricks managed to live together without slitting each other’s throats, but then he reasoned that their relationship was probably a microcosm of the society at large: a society with a caste system, with Rick always at the top. Morty accepted that he was the sidekick in the relationship, but did all Mortys accept that? Were all Ricks domineering assholes? He just let it go. He would know soon enough.

***

He did know soon enough. They went shopping the next day. The caste system ensured that Mortys did most of the customer service jobs while the Ricks bossed them around. Ricks did most of the skilled labor. He saw a Rick sushi chef, Rick doctors, Rick sheriffs, Rick CEOs. Meanwhile, the Mortys were the secretaries, the nurses, the sales reps, the sidekicks.

Ricks clearly enjoyed the higher ground. They were the ones wearing well-tailored suits with handkerchiefs folded into the front pockets. He was pretty sure he saw a Rick leading a Morty on a _leash_. His stomach flipped when he saw Ricks mercilessly lambast their sidekicks for the most demeaning reasons. At one point, he grabbed his Rick by the hand and refused to let go. His life in this society depended on his grandfather’s automatic status. He clung to his only protection. Either because Rick cared about his Morty a little more than the average Rick, or because he was scared himself, he allowed it.

For the most part, Mortys treated him like a human being, and Ricks treated him like an object to be manipulated by voice command. Their relationship writ large. Emergent behaviors resulted in a caste system, a slave-master dichotomy, the separation of the masculine and feminine like the separation of oil and water. The oil always rested on the top, supported by a near limitless supply of warm, emasculated Mortys. His grandpa could joke with the higher ups in an establishment, but Morty could feel the pressure to remain quiet and subservient while he was shooting the shit.

The day was thoroughly demoralizing.

“R--Rick, I don’t like it here.”

“Why not?” Rick was on the road to getting thoroughly drunk in the living room.

“It’s--Mortys are treated like slaves, Rick. I saw a Morty on a leash. How is that okay?”

“Listen, listen, th--th--they’re not slaves, they’re paid a fair wage just like everyone else. The government mandates it and the little peons follow it.” He sloshed his drink while gesturing toward his son. “Mortys are protected heavily under the law. They’re--they’re important too.”

“Then how come I don’t see any Mortys bossing Ricks around?”

“Because that’s just not how -- AUOUGhh -- it works. We’re the ones with the genius.” He tapped his finger to his temple.

Morty sighed. “You’re not that sm--smart, you know.”

“Uh, Morty, we’re only the smartest beings in the multiverse, doh.”

“Not all the time.”

“That’s such a -- a Morty thing to say.”

“Just -- Ricks don’t treat their grandchildren very well, that’s all.”

“Because they’re smart enough to not get attAAAAched.”

“I’m -- I’m going to bed.”

Rick wished he was smart enough to not get attached.

***

Rick set up a makeshift workbench in his bedroom. He pushed his bed flush against the window. Even though the light fell right across the pillow, he left it there. He didn’t plan on getting much sleep until he had a working prototype of a brain wave cloaking device, an extra protection on top of Morty’s natural abilities. Something had alerted the authorities to his presence and exact location, despite the fact that he scrupulously guarded the secret of his exact whereabouts from all his contacts.

The device would have to sit near his head to be most effective. As of yet he could not build a working model with the power of Morty’s invisibility. The best he could come up with was a slightly sexually suggestive metal collar, but it was too obvious. If the Federation ever found him, they would spot him easily in a sea of Ricks and Mortys. It also limited his ability to move his neck. 

An earpiece might work, but a sufficiently powerful cloaking device might scramble his brain waves. He didn’t want to turn into Morty. It would also just be plain irritating.

Then he thought maybe an earring was a nice compromise. Close enough to his brain but not rooted in the ear canal, out of the way, and stylish. He had had his ears pierced once, and he missed them a little bit. He was proud enough to worry that he might look stupid with pierced ears at seventy, but then he realized that he didn’t give a fuck.

He had the cloaking device done by the next night. On the outside, it resembled a square cubic zirconium earring, but inside it contained the tiny crystal that vibrated at the right frequency to disrupt some of the brain waves that he radiated outward, without interrupting normal brain function. He sterilized a thin needle and pierced his ear in his bathroom. Once inserted, the earring sparkled in the white light of the bathroom. “Hm. Not bad, Sanchez.” For symmetry, he had made a regular cubic zirconium earring to put in his other ear.

“D--did you pierce your ears?”

He only grinned in response.

“I -- uh, I like it, heh.”

In an unusually good mood, he ruffled his grandson’s hair.

He felt a little safer.


	7. Idle Hands Are the Devil’s Workshop

The pair of them eventually decked out the apartment in a manly manner. Video games, a TV, cucumber and melon hand soap, the good stuff. For the time being, neither of them bothered to find work. Rick had a considerable amount stowed away from previous drug deals and arms smuggling, and it wasn’t like he had had to pay rent when he lived with his daughter’s family. Since they were forced into hiding, they had a commodity few people enjoyed: free time.

In typical old person fashion, Rick was usually in front of the TV, asleep. Only when Morty double and triple checked that his grandfather was truly asleep (and not actually dead or faking) did he dare to inch toward the TV remote and change the channel. Once he clicked the button, Rick immediately sprang to life, yanked the TV remote out of his hand, and changed it back. Then he promptly fell asleep again. Rinse and repeat all night.

As far as multiplayer video games went, Rick had him beat on hand-eye coordination and, just like in real life, he would destroy him every time at every conceivable thing. Yet Morty still played because he enjoyed the time they spent together. However, he dared not admit to such a sappy thing for fear of a jab at his masculinity. His grandpa would crow whenever he won a campaign and would sometimes spill beer on him, which was nice.

Unfortunately, in an apartment that small, every sound transmitted through the walls. Morty, in a dire effort to sleep or drown out the sound of his thoughts, shut the curtains on the perpetually lit up world and cowered under his blanket to muffle the sounds from the other bedroom. The flavor of the night tonight was welding torch.

He decided now was as good a time as any to see what porn he could find. He banked on the welding torch drowning out any possible sounds he could make. He pulled out his phone and poked around on /hm/ for something good. Holy shit, he hit the jackpot. The first thread, dedicated to older guys. The starting images were alright, a guy in various states of undress, but the rest of the thread, oh geez. Underneath the starting post, an anon posted a series of images of a gray-haired scientist in a laboratory pushing his assistant against a table and taking him completely. Morty ran his hand over his stiffening cock through his boxer shorts. His eyes zeroed in on the first image, the scientist’s hand wrapped around his assistant’s neck, digging into the flesh. The older man’s hips pinned the younger man to the table and his eyes shone with a predatory glint. They both wore lab coats. His cock stood at attention, and he stroked it in earnest. His face flushed. He was masturbating furiously to a facsimile of him and his grandfather, and he didn’t care.

He no longer looked at the pictures. His imagination goaded him along. He hoped his imagination was where this sick, hot fantasy would stay. Or not. It didn’t matter, Rick wouldn’t pin him by the throat to the wall, bump teeth in a crushing kiss, yank his hair from behind while plowing him into the mattress in any conceivable dimension, unless it was for a quick buck in a nightclub.

His orgasm socked him in the stomach, and he groaned before he could cover his mouth. He shot up in bed, covered in spunk, and marveled at the silent apartment. When did the welding torch cut off? Oh geez, did his grandpa hear him? He wiped the cum off his stomach with an old pair of underwear and tiptoed into the living room. He could only guess what was happening behind the closed door of the other bedroom. It was dead quiet. Usually some kind of clanging emanated through the walls. He feared that his grandpa guessed at his little secret and was thinking of the best way to apply for another Morty. More probable, and worse than the other option, was that Rick would flay him for his sickness and then he would lose the only friend he had. And then after his utter humiliation at the hands of his only friend, he would use the voucher to apply for another Morty.

***

Just short of having his ears on a swivel, the genius scientist could locate and hear sound beyond the ability of most people. At night, he could hear Morty’s breathing in the other room. He had the ears of a fugitive who lived to outsmart the law. While he welded two pieces of metal, he kept his ears open for intruders. He never trusted his safety. That’s why he had the honor of being seventy years old.

So he heard everything in this cracker box, including the sound of his grandson panting as he touched himself in the other room. He felt sick for listening, but his brain interpreted the sound waves without his consent. He had turned the welding torch off and the unwelcome thought of just sneaking in and helping him out wrestled its way into his head. He reached under his desk for a bottle instead.

***

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

***

Morty turned the TV to the news whenever his grandpa left for longer than a day to make sure that he wasn’t suddenly a wanted criminal here too. For the majority of the shows, a Morty reporter would talk about politics or what some Rick somewhere stole or murdered this time. 

One day they had a special on Mortytown, a slum where Rickless Mortys camped out and mugged unfortunate passersby. Their rampant drug abuse was fueled by unscrupulous (who was he kidding, they were all unscrupulous) Ricks who learned to manufacture the most addictive substance in the universe, which they used to lure depressed, lonely Mortys into a life of subservience to their dealers. Morty wondered why they didn’t have a better social safety net, but then he began to wonder if it was because those on top benefited from the subjugation of wayward Mortys. The more he watched the news, the angrier he became at the obvious injustice.

One day, he brought it up over dinner.

“R--Rick. Why are you such an asshole to everybody?”

He set down his fork. “Listen, you little -- you little shit--.”

“I mean, n--not just you. All of you are assholes to all of us all the time, and you know what? I--I’m tired of it, Rick!”

“That’s just how it is, Morty. The multiverse would literally fAAAOll apart if we tried to change it.”

“You -- you know what? I think you’re just -- you’re just saying that because you -- you all like being jerks to us and bossing us around! You don’t want it to change because then you wouldn’t be the boss anymore!”

“Mortys like being b--bossed around just as much as we like bossing you around. It’s the natural OOOUorder of things.”

“I’m tired of -- sick of being the sidekick.”

“You couldn’t live without me and you know it.”

“Yeah, well, y--you couldn’t live without me either!” Morty hoped that this was true anyway, but he wasn’t at all certain that Ricks didn’t live just fine without them.

“I don’t see Ricks living in slums.”

“Because they -- they have the upper hand here! We’re -- we’re thrown away whe--when we’re not useful. Maybe they wouldn’t live in slums if you would actually help them!” Morty fumed.

“What, you th--think the government’s going to step in and save them all?”

“They -- they should.”

“Well, they’re not! They’re just as useless as -- as the US government at home. You can’t depend on them for anything.”

“But I mean, can’t there be a ch -- a charity or something?”

“I don’t know. What, some M--Morty lover didn’t already create one?”

“I--I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“I -- you -- I hate you, Rick.”

“I’ll make a note of it.” He went back to eating. Morty huffed and puffed and took his food to his room.

He didn’t like being bossed around, did he? Or did he?

***

He fucking loved being bossed around. He threw his head back and banged his head on the wall. “Fuck.” He rubbed the back of his head. This was so humiliating, and that just made his hard-on worse. He was masturbating to old men on his phone, his grandpa could probably hear him in the other room, and he didn’t give a fuck. He wanted the motherfucker to hear.

He thumbed his slit and trailed the welling precum down the underside of his cock. He bit his hand to stifle a groan. He imagined his grandfather as a tease, so he brought himself to the edge over and over, then pulled back. It delayed the inevitable shame that followed the finish.

Eventually he pushed himself too far, and he shot cum across his stomach and chest, cock twitching with every spurt. 

He lied back in bed, flushed and sweaty and ashamed. He dreaded the post-orgasm emergence from his room. Cumming to thoughts of his grandpa made it really hard to face him after the fact. Something about his indifference, his resistance to being owned, made him all the more desirable and impossible to deal with. No matter how much Morty holed himself in his room, seeing Rick being his cocky self inflamed him all over again.

Since they were in hiding together with no sign of emerging, Morty’s life became impossible. A cycle of continuous sin and repentance.

Little did Morty know that Rick had the same problem. He was pretty sure his son had broken some kind of record for the number of times he could masturbate in a day, and the sound of him drove him to drink. He was continuously on the cusp of kissing him. He never paid attention to Morty’s incoherent rambling about Morty rights or whatever, just watched his lips move and imagined them around his dick. A much better use for that mouth of his.

The apartment trapped them in close proximity twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Since they were in hiding together with no sign of emerging, Rick’s life became impossible. A cycle of continuous push and pull. Dragging his grandson closer, then pushing him away with biting insults in an effort to save them both. There was no end, just the ebb and flow of a tide they depended on. He hated it and he wanted it.

When Morty worked up the courage to leave his room, his grandpa was gone.


	8. Trouble Costs an Arm and a Leg

“Morty, Morty! L--look at this shit!” He interrupted Morty’s view of the television and held a key in front of his face. 

“It’s a key.”

“Yes, a skeleton key. We can enter any government building in the Citadel.”

“Wh--why would you want to do that?”

“To fuck with them, obviously. Fuckers deserve it. I’ve already got an idea.”

Morty sighed and bit the bait. “Okay, Rick. What is it?”

***

Who knew that covering the floor of the capitol building in corrosive alien muck was seen as a terroristic threat?

Rick and Morty running from the authorities for a hundred years. Street traffic stood at a standstill. It was rush hour, the main thoroughfares clogged with cars. This gave them the opportunity to weave through the vehicles down an alley toward an empty residential street. A Morty was just about to get in his vehicle, but Rick snagged the keys right out of his hands and pushed him away from the driver’s side door. Morty hopped into the passenger side and they sped off toward the outskirts of town. He looked behind him to see the Morty crying in the street. 

“Rick, what are we gonna do?”

“We -- we gotta lose ‘em. If we evade them for a few hours, they’ll call off the search. We can blend right in. I mean everyone looks like us. What are they -- what -- what are they gonna do? Interrogate every Rick and Morty in the Citadel?”

He U-turned and sped back toward the busy urban center, planning to slow down, park, and blend in with the foot traffic walking back home.

He skidded to a stop in front of a barricade of police cars. “Run, Morty!” He jumped out and ran ahead, leaving Morty to defend the rear. They always concealed carried, prepared for any eventuality. In a universe with infinite dimensions, all things were guaranteed to happen, including shooting at the Citadel’s well armed police force after vandalizing a government building.

Bursts of energy fired from behind fried street signs and scorched the facades of buildings. Morty, even with practice, had trouble shooting while running, but he managed to thin the herd out to a few officers.

He leveled a shot at one of the Rick officer’s legs, and he fell to the ground in a splash of blood. His partner knelt down to tend to him. That left one Morty officer to contend with.

They ran down an alleyway that ended in a brick wall. Typical, Morty thought, and they whipped around to face their attacker. They leveled their guns at each other.

“Don’t move or I’ll shoot!” The police officer alternated between pointing at Morty and pointing at Rick.

“Now, now p--put the guns down, both of you, and--and put your hands up.”

The exchange happened in an instant. The police officer and Rick fired at the same time. The officer collapsed, dead, a bleeding hole where his heart was. Rick slid to the ground, his back to the wall. His right leg up to the hip had been completely vaporized. Blood spurted from the wound in bursts.

“Oh my God, oh my God, Rick, we gotta get you outta here, come on, uh--.” He scrambled to think of the best way to carry him home.

“Morty, give me your socks.”

“Wh--what?”

“Now!”

Morty took off his shoes and socks and handed the latter to his friend. He tied the two socks together and fashioned a tourniquet to tie above the burnt stump of his leg. The bleeding lessened.

“And your shirt.” He took his shirt off without hesitation and handed it to him. Rick wrapped the fabric around his open wound and tucked the ends into the socks. He hissed when the fabric stuck to his flesh.

“Where’s your portal gun? Come on, you--you’re gonna bleed out here.”

“Morty, the portal gun hasn’t been charged since we -- since we got here. Portaling the ship sucked the -- the -- the last of the juice, haven’t reple--replenished its power source since.”

“Oh geez, oh geez, wh--what--what are we gonna do? You’re gonna die.”

“Carry me home. Turn around and -- and I’ll hop on.”

He turned around and let Rick wrap his arms around his neck, but he was too tall. His good leg dragged along the ground. 

“This isn’t gonna work. Here, I--.” In a burst of strength he scooped Rick up bridal style. His grandfather wound his arms around him. Morty blanched, and not just at the blood that stained his clothes. He weighed nothing at all. It was like carrying a bag of bones.

“Okay, Morty,” Rick said into the crook of his neck, “let’s find the car. Keys are still in the ignition.”

They retraced their steps. Shop owners peeked their heads out of the doors and residents eyed them from second story windows. The trail of carnage led them the way they came. They passed the corpses of officers with blood foaming from their mouths. Melted street signs pointed them the rest of the way.

The police barricade was still in place, but all the officers were dead. For now they were safe. Morty gingerly placed Rick in the passenger side and then got in the other side himself. 

“We gotta go to the hospital, y--you’re bleeding everywhere. There’s blood on me. Hey, Rick?” He lay senseless across from him. He shook him awake.

“Wha--?”

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“No .... Too--too dangerous.”

“What does it matter if you’re dead?!”

They locked eyes and Morty already knew that he had lost. He sped toward home, fully ready to bury his grandpa in the backyard like he did with the last one.

He rushed his grandpa inside, laid him on the couch, ran to grab a towel, realized there were no clean ones, dug around in his bedroom for an old one, came back, placed it under him, and ran into the other bedroom all in one breath. 

He knocked stuff off the shelves trying to find some magic leg regrowth serum or something. He had no idea what to do. His grandfather was slumped over the armrest flirting with death, bleeding all over the upholstery. Oh, what would guests think of a corpse in the living room? He ran back into the main room to yell at his grandpa for being an idiot, how could he be so stupid, he was going to die --.

“The welding torch.”

“The what?”

“Get it.”

He brought it in and blessed the Lord that it was portable.

“Use it on me.”

“What?”

“Now, you little fuck! Cauterize the wound!”

He turned the torch on. In some kind of fugue state, he thought that the flame matched his grandfather’s eyes. Just as fiery. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t --.

“God dammit.” He grabbed it from Morty’s shaking hand. He turned it on himself.

Hell was more than a metaphysical concept, it was the sound of human screaming and the smell of burning flesh in a blood-splashed living room.

Morty cowered in the corner until it was over. Admittedly it didn’t take long but it smelled like burnt bacon and acetylene and he vowed never to eat bacon again. He didn’t know human beings could shriek quite like that and he didn’t know burnt flesh smelled like sizzling sausage in a pan. 

Rick looked like the Devil had run him through with a pitchfork and then pissed on him for good measure. Sweat and blood glued his singed shirt to his body. His hands shook as he pulled his somehow intact wallet out of his left pants pocket.

“G--go to a medical supply store, g--get me an IV.”

“O--okay.” He took the wallet, accidentally brushing his fingers against that of a corpse. He would be dead by the time he got back, had to be going into shock. He thought he should buy a shovel while he was out.

Tears made it hard to navigate but he found a place selling an IV pole with a bag of saline. The cashier appraised the wet tracks on his face, the burnt clothes, the bloody shoes, but he didn’t say anything, just took the money from his shaking fingers without asking. The minimum wage Rick wasn’t paid enough to meddle in some customer’s messy business.

Morty didn’t have the heart nor the time to buy a shovel. He dragged the unwieldy pole through the door. The TV was on. Rick shivered under the towel.

“Find me an elastic tie down. Y--y--you know, the stretchy things you u--used to play with.”

He snagged it off the shelf in the bedroom and proffered it to him. 

“Tie it around my arm. Higher. There. Okay.” Rick palpated for a vein. “Hand me that needle.”

Morty watched his grandfather insert an IV like a professional even though he had had his leg blown off an hour ago.

He stayed up all night watching Rick flit in and out of consciousness because he feared that he would die if he closed his eyes.

***

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“What?” He had fallen asleep without meaning to.

“Fuckin’ hurts, what do you think, dipshit? Get me my medicine, it’s in my pill box.”

Morty turned to go.

“And a glass of water.”

Rick had a lot of pills in his pill box. It was more like a pill bucket. What did he want? Some of them originated from Earth, others had directions written in illegible script. He dug around until he thought he found it. Oxycodone.

“H--here. Is this it?”

Rick’s glassy eyes attempted to focus on the tiny label. Finally, he said, “Eh, good enough.” He took six.


	9. Please Stop Calling Me Smart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I am not being too slow in releasing chapters. It's been a hectic summer and sometimes I forget! What do you all think so far? Anyway, thank you so much for reading! I cherish every one of your reviews and kudos.

Morty had to help Rick do everything: shower, change, use the bathroom. It was humiliating for everyone, and they bickered constantly. Rick tore him apart for being useless and Morty insulted his intelligence whenever possible. 

At 10:45 on a Sunday morning, Rick did the verbal equivalent of stick his leg out for Morty to trip over. As he walked past, he said, “Thanks.” Morty stopped and turned around. He almost broke into a smile until he heard the rest. “Thanks ... for being such a pain in my ass.”

He tripped hard. Now he was mad. “Me a pain in the ass? I--I have to take care of you constantly! And the whole time, y--you--you constantly yell at me that I’m no good. You -- I saved your life. Would it kill you to not be a dick all the time? Like can you even stop for like a second?”

“I wouldn’t be such a dick if you actually gave me my pain meds on time, _Morty_.”

“You take too much, you’re gonna get addicted. You went through a whole bottle in two days and I had to -- had to stay up all night to make sure you didn’t stop breathing or something. I’m giving them out and you can just live with it.”

“I don’t know if you noticed or not, but yeah, yeah, I don’t have a fucking leg!”

“You don’t have a brain either!”

“Oh, yeah, that’s rich, really -- r--really taking the high road, Morty.”

“It’s -- it was all your fault. Nowhere in your genius brain, you didn’t, like, think, ‘Oh, this is a stupid idea, I better stay at home instead of attract the attention of the law again’? No? Did you? No, because you never think. You just do -- do whatever stupid crap pops into your head and then I have to clean up the mess.”

Rick almost said something in response but Morty steamrolled over him. “No, you know what? You -- you don’t even -- can’t even take a crap without having to ask me first, you don’t get to say anything. So shut up.

“You’re the smartest guy in the universe, but you’re also like the dumbest guy I know. Maybe even dumber than me, maybe even dumber than Dad!”

“Li--listen, you little piece of shit--.”

“No! I’m done, Rick. You -- you crawl around on the floor, I’m not helping you.”

“Ugh. Fine. You want me to say I’m sorry?”

“Yes, yes I do.”

“Okay, fine. I’m sorry. There, I said it. Happy?”

Morty waited for a quip, but when none came, he said, “What, no--no insults?”

“No. You’re right, I was an idiot, you’re smarter than me.” He sighed. “Okay, so are you gonna help me?”

“Yes.” He couldn’t believe he had wrested an apology from his grandpa, even if it was couched in sarcasm.

“Good. Help me up, I gotta take a shit.”

***

For better or worse, Rick’s wound began to heal and his strength returned. Morty finally found a pair of crutches for him so he didn’t have to wait on him hand and foot.

Since he didn’t have to depend on Morty anymore, Morty could actually leave to take care of some business. He brought home a shitload of food and DVDs to keep Rick occupied, and he laid the rest of his shopping on his bed. On the floor, he set out bundles of wire and pieces of metal, as well as some parts for ball and socket joints. He began work on a prosthetic.

***

He thankfully worked uninterrupted. His grandpa lied down conked out from pain pills most of the time, and the rest of the time, he would snap feebly from his chair like a beat up, chained dog whenever Morty passed him. He snuck the welding torch, screws, screwdrivers, alcohol, whatever he needed, into his room while he slept, which was always. The sound of _Ball Fondlers_ drowned out the noise of clanking metal and curses.

He was no Rick. This was no pet mouse. He wished he still had it with him for company, but he had had no time to swipe it before having to abandon it all. He was so mad at his grandpa for being an idiot, he was so mad at himself for being an idiot. He kicked the knee joint in frustration. It clanked against the wall and rolled back to his foot undamaged.

He couldn’t figure out how to make a microprocessor that adjusted the knee joint when the wearer walked. His soldering sucked, his hand shook too much and he gunked up the chip every time, having to start over. He had about ten or twelve ruined chips. The outer hardware was easy, the thigh and the calf looked great, but the important parts, the joints, didn’t work yet. He hadn’t even approached the top of the artificial leg that would connect to Rick’s body. He wanted to use electrodes that picked up nerve signals so he could walk without too much effort. How the hell was he supposed to do that?

He stared at the upright bottle of vodka at the foot of his desk. He picked it up and unscrewed the lid. He wafted the scent of hand sanitizer off the neck of the bottle. He took a deep breath and drank it straight. He spluttered, splashing some of the alcohol on the floor. The alcohol burned on its way down like a meteor through the atmosphere. Instead of fizzling out, it started a wildfire in his stomach. He drank again to fan the flames. Maybe it would make him smarter.

“Stop drinking my vodka!” the angry voice said from the other room. Morty wiped his mouth, screwed the lid, and set it back on the floor.

“You think I -- think I don’t know what you’re doing?” His voice sounded much closer, right outside the door. The doorknob turned and he flung it open unceremoniously.

“Think I didn’t hear you? Oh, oh great, Morty, you found my beer too. R--real nice.” Together, they surveyed the empty beer cans standing vigil around Morty’s useless prosthetic leg.

“What the hell is this?” He crutched his way into the room, careful not to crush electronics underfoot. He poked the leg with one of the crutches.

“Are you -- are you building a prosthetic leg?” Morty nodded.

“How the -- why didn’t you ask me? We coulda had this done in a night. How did you even --? When did you move all my stuff?” He grumbled some more about wasted time and wasted alcohol. 

“Let’s get this shit straightened out. And put my alcohol back in my room.”

Rick demanded that Morty bring the leg (and the alcohol) into the other bedroom. They laid the disembodied part on the table. He took over the swivel chair and Morty sat on the floor handing him stuff. In a few hours they had a working prosthesis.

“There we go, that’s more like it. Mo--Morty, look at that.” He rolled backward so he could admire his work of art from afar. “Pretty shoddy welding you did on some of it, but it’ll work. Alright, let’s try this sucker out. Help me out, Morty.”

Attaching the leg involved placing anchors underneath the skin. They pretty much had to inject lidocaine and perform surgery to place electrodes and intramuscular anchors into his hip. Morty was forced to wipe blood from the site every few minutes and position the leg just right. By the end blood covered his arms and Rick’s side.

Rick stood up, bending and unbending his knee and flexing his foot. He wiggled his toes, four in all (they both decided that four toes were enough as far as balance went). He put weight on it. He stood straight for the first time in months. He exuded pride.

“Yeah, science, bitch! God damn, I’m the best.” He fist pumped the air and drained the rest of the vodka in one go.

Morty let him take all the credit, like always.

***

Morty had wanted some credit for building the body of the limb, sure, but this wasn’t his idea of receiving gratitude. Rick had him pinned by the shirt to the wall in the living room. His mechanical knee also pinned him by the crotch. Jesus Christ, he was glad it was the fake leg and not the real one. He wouldn’t be able to feel his shameful hard-on. In the scuffle, they had knocked over the TV and the cable box. The muffled sound of a reality TV show provided the backdrop to their interaction.

“Do you -- do you even know what you’ve done?” He was mere inches away. Puffs of alcohol breath ghosted across his face. He shook him roughly. “Do you?!”

“N--n--no, Rick, wh--what did I do?” 

“You -- your brain waves, Morty. My brain waves are a -- AOUGhre a beacon for the whole universe to find me. You know why the Federation found us? Because you’re not doing your job anymore! Your Morty waves shielded my genius waves from the government, from people who want me dead. But it doesn’t work if you’re actually smart, you hear me? You’re not shielding me anymore, Morty, you’re potentiating me.”

Morty shivered, petrified under the acetylene blue fire of his eyes, stomach fluttering from the close contact.

“See? You didn’t -- didn’t -- you know what potentiate means. You’re not helping me anymore. What if they find us here, Morty? Your brain is screaming ‘Here I am’ to the whole fuckin’ universe.”

“I don’t -- what -- what do you want me to do?” He breathed hard for various reasons. God, this was fucked up, why was he so fucked up? “Are you ... are you gonna make me stupid again?”

He let go, and Morty slid to the floor because his legs were jelly. “No. No, if -- if you’re even a quarter as smart as me, I think -- I think we can make it work.”

“M--make what work, R--Rick?”

“I’ll have to make another brain wave scrambler,” he said to himself.

“You’re more useful when you’re smart than when you’re dAOUUmb, Morty,” he said to him. “You are smart, you know -- for a Morty.” Morty wasn’t sure but that might have been a compliment. He took what he could get.

“R--really?”

“Yes, for fuck’s sake, don’t make me say it again. It hurt enough the first time.”

So Morty had a kink for domination too. Great. This would fuel his imagination for weeks.


	10. The Art of Frustration

So not only did he want a relative who was sixty years older than him, he also wanted said relative to beat the shit out of him first before fucking him. He wanted him at his most hateful. Therefore, in his genius mind, Morty got the idea to try to piss Rick off whenever possible on the slim chance that he would pin him to the wall again.

It didn’t take much probing to find reasons to argue. In fact, it was Rick’s fault they were hiding in the Citadel in the first place; Morty had the high ground. Whenever he got the least bit annoyed by his grandfather, which was often enough, he brought up the fact that everything was his fault and he should go back to hell where he originated. 

“So--so, y--you’re rehashing this argument again, huh?” he said, slurring his words a little more than usual.

“Y--yeah, Rick, I am.” His heart beat its wings against his ribs. He loved making him mad, even if it was the equivalent of provoking a bull with a red flag.

“So, just because IAOGhh stroked your dick one time, you think you’re fuckin’ smarter than me?”

“You’re the one who got us in this mess! So--so yeah, I do think I’m smarter than you ... sometimes.” He didn’t believe that at all, he just knew it was one of Rick’s weak spots. He expertly poked and prodded him into a fury.

Maybe he overshot the mark, he had time to think when he hit the ground. Rick had shoved him hard and now he was splayed out, defenseless. He tried to sit up but Rick slammed him back down. One hand gripped his shoulder and the other hand had him by the neck. He leaned right into his face, close enough that the alcohol stung Morty’s eyes. “Yo--you’ve been a real pain in the ass recently, you know that?” He laced his fingers around Morty’s neck tighter. He became acutely aware of their proximity, and despite the genuine fear, he felt himself heat up from adrenaline and arousal.

He really did it this time. Rick was pissed and piss drunk and yelling obscenities at him, but Morty wasn’t listening. Rick wore nothing but a wife beater and boxer shorts and their bodies were an inch apart and God he hoped his grandfather didn’t notice his straining erection. He released the hold on his neck and raised his hand as if to strike, but before a blow landed Morty kicked him off and now Morty had Rick pinned to the ground.

They both glared at each other without saying a word. Both of them were out of steam. Morty leaned forward, hesitated for a second, then caught Rick across the teeth. The kiss only lasted as long as it took for Rick to realize what was going on, and then he grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him away. He stood up and wiped his mouth. Without saying anything, he went to his bedroom. Morty sat dumbfounded. What the hell had he just done?

***

They didn’t speak the next day. They ate in silence, sat on opposite sides of the couch and watched TV, and eyed each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking. 

Morty broke the silence. “A--a--are we -- are we n--not gonna talk about yesterday?”

Rick shifted positions. “What about yesterday?” He looked like he hadn’t slept all night. He stared at his grandson sullenly for interrupting his thoughts.

“I mean -- just --.”

Rick wasn’t helping at all. He was going to make Morty say it out loud. But that would make it real, he thought.

“Nothing.”

They went back to watching TV.

***

Everything slowly returned to normal. They righted the chairs they knocked over the other day. Morty stopped invoking Rick’s wrath. They acted curt but polite toward each other. There were no adventures to go on until Rick fixed up a brain wave scrambler for Morty, which he kept putting off in favor of drinking in front of the television. So they stayed inside and only went out for food.

It amazed Morty how well they avoided each other in an eight hundred square foot apartment. They were both slowly being driven insane due to their extended confinement.

Only many quiet days later did Morty hear the characteristic sound of something being worked on in the other room. The next day Rick showed him what it was. He held up a small metal circle.

“I--I finally did it, MOURGhty.”

“Did what?”

“This is a brain wave scrambler. It goes under your skin. I have one in my ear.” He pointed to his left earlobe. “Since you decided to become smarter than Jerry, you need one too or else the government will find us again.”

“O--okay. Are you gonna put that in my ear?”

“No, Morty, it’s going in your neck.”

“What?”

He pulled from his pocket a syringe, a bottle of lidocaine, and a scalpel.

“I promise, this’ll be quick.”

“Oh geez.”

***

Morty rubbed the tender spot on his neck, which was covered by a band-aid. It itched.

“Stop scratching it, Morty. Do I need to put a cone on you?”

“S--sorry, I’ll stop. So ... does this mean we can go outside again?”

“Yes. Just in time too because I gotta pick up something and -- and I’m gonna need your help.”

“Oh, okay.”

They finally stepped out into the eternally sunny world for the first time in weeks. The bloody car still sat in the driveway, but they eschewed it for walking to their destination. It must not be very far.

The scenery changed from cultivated lawns and pruned trees to a more wild, sinister urban landscape. The road became more pothole than blacktop, and weeds sprang out from cracks in the sidewalk. Rick knew where he was headed. He walked with confidence. His pants and shoes hid his prosthetic leg, and he had mastered the art of controlling the artificial limb. To everyone else, he was just another Rick.

He knocked on a door situated between two storefronts for lease. It opened up seemingly of its own accord and Rick disappeared inside. Morty reluctantly followed.

They walked up a set of steep stairs in the dark, and then they came upon a second door, already open. Red light suffused the inside of the apartment. A Rick sat with legs splayed out on a ripped up, stained couch. He didn’t move his head when they approached, just drew from a hookah while an emaciated Morty rubbed his shoulders. Shadows flitted across the walls, betraying the presence of other Mortys deeper in the apartment.

“Hello, D-013. I sense that you brought your Morty with you.”

For maybe the first time in his life, Rick D-013 shifted from foot to foot in obvious uncertainty. He took a deep breath. “Yes, I did.”

“Why? Are you afraid to see me by yourself?”

He scoffed. “No.”

“Don’t bother lying. I can smell your sweat from here.”

“Just cut the crap, you creep. Get one of your little pr--prostitutes and--and let’s get this over with.”

Morty D-013 tugged on Rick’s sleeve. “H--hey, Rick, what’s going on--?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he whispered. Out loud: “Alright, h--hurry up. I did my share.”

“Please, no need to rush. Have a seat.” He directed a sick grin at them. Morty realized with a start that he had no eyes, just empty, pink sockets that stared blankly just above their heads. Another Morty dragged some chairs from the kitchen into the living room.

“D--do we have to--?”

“Shut up, Morty,” Rick said. He elbowed his partner in the ribs and pushed him toward one of the wooden chairs, then sat down himself. Morty eased into the chair, afraid it would bite him or something. They waited for blind Rick to speak. Instead, he smoked more and leaned into his pet Morty’s touch, almost as if two other people weren’t waiting for him to pick up the conversation. Morty’s stomach lurched. It all felt a little too intimate for company.

“Let me tell you about another man who tried to make some extra money by drug running,” he finally said. “He was wildly successful. He had unlimited money, unlimited booze, and unlimited women. But he got a little too greedy. He started cutting his supply and keeping a tithe of it for himself. Well, his customers didn’t really like that. They caught on and tracked down his whereabouts. You know what they did?” He paused for effect. “They cut out his eyes!” At the last sentence, he laughed. “You still want this?”

“I--I just want what I came here for.” Morty and Rick caught eyes. They were both unnerved by creepy Rick.

“Now, I’m stuck in the Citadel, blind, with nothing but Mortys for company,” he said as if he didn’t hear. “But I still make my living by pawning off my old junk to Ricks like you. So what is it you wanted?”

“The invisibility device.”

“Oh, right. T-1488, get the metal collar out of my room.” A shadow in the other room sprang from the bed and rummaged through a desk. He brought the collar to his boss and slunk back to his room. Blind Rick accepted it without thanks.

“The way this little baby works is that it lowers the wavelength of light that bounces off the wearer into the ultraviolet range, rendering him invisible to humans. Obviously, it doesn’t work on aliens that perceive ultraviolet, nor does it work on creatures that perceive with senses other than sight. It’s proven indispensable to me, but because you’ve rendered a service to me, I’m giving it to you for free.” He held it out for Rick to take.

“Can we go now?”

Blind Rick’s lip curled in derision. “Yeah. Go nuts.”

They hightailed it out of there.

At home, while Rick turned the collar over and over in his hands, trying to figure out how it worked, Morty asked where he met the guy.

“Used to come to the Citadel as a supplier of raw materials. This guy runs a huge drug ring in Mortytown. He’s probably the richest Rick you’ll ever meet.”

“Do--doesn’t look like it. Wait, wait, you--you--?”

“Use your wORGHds, Morty.”

“Don’t you feel bad for those guys at all? They’re addicted to drugs and it--it’s kind of all your fault.”

“Morty, I needed money, I was just satisfying a demand. If I didn’t do it, someone else would have. Th--there’d still be drugged up Mortys and I’d be -- I’d be broke. Where do you think I got money to take you on adventures, huh? You know how much money we’ve spent in arcades b--because you have a gambling problem?”

“It’s not gambling!”

“C’mon, arcades are casinos for kids and you’re their prime target because you’re loose with GrandpAOUgh’s money.”

“Well, an--another thing, Rick, w--why didn’t you just make you--your own invisibility thing? Why did we have to go to some creepy guy’s house?”

“This guy’s got access to shit you can only dream of, Morty, including prisms that change visible light to u--ultraviolet light. I--I--the aliens that made that shit were wiped out decades ago. It’s too expensive to make nowadays.”

“Oh.” Morty didn’t ask anymore questions, even though he had plenty. Like why he had to go with Rick even though all they picked up was a metal collar. Or for what purpose Rick needed a cloaking device.

***

Rick stared into an empty mirror. So the device still worked. Good. It was 3 AM and broad daylight. It was an extra precaution on his excursions. His grandson slept with the sheets tangled around him. He opened the door slowly and closed it gently enough to mask the sound of his exit.

He didn’t run drugs or arms anymore. He did something worse.

The streets were blessedly empty as he walked toward his destination. He pushed open an unassuming door that led into a rundown diner. He removed the collar, put it in his coat pocket, and stepped up to the Rick behind the bar.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” employee Rick said back.

“I’ll take the special.” He internally grimaced. He had the most lax morals in the universe, but even he had a limit and he crossed it every time he came here.

“Okay.” The employee opened the “Employees Only” door and held it open for him to walk through.

“Any of ‘em. Have a nice night.” He left, leaving Rick alone with a bunch of lounging Mortys. They glanced at him for a second before returning to their phones, or in the case of two of them, their lines of white powder. 

He approached one of the Mortys who was playing one of those bubble pop games on his phone. He touched him on the shoulder. He put down the phone and stared at him with the bluest eyes he had ever seen. The innocent expression and under-eye circles hit Rick in the chest. How could he do this? 

Too easily. He followed the blue-eyed kid to a room with a bed. Maybe it was too brightly lit but he didn’t care. He already sported an anticipatory half chub when Blue Eyes looked at him expectantly.

“Strip.” It was part of the routine. He watched the skinny boy with hunger as Rick unbuckled his belt and let his pants fall to the floor. They appraised each other for a second, one of them stark naked and the other still wearing his coat and sweater. Blue Eyes stepped back in surprise at the prosthetic leg. He hadn’t visited since the police chase. 

Not even bothering to ask, he grabbed the boy and caught him in a hungry kiss. He flinched from the cold metal and the unexpected kiss, but Rick’s arms pulled him closer. Eventually Blue closed his eyes and let it happen, matching his tongue blow for blow. They pulled apart, Blue’s swollen lips and doll eyes making Rick’s heart jump with lust and maybe something like sympathy. His hands moved from his shoulders to his chest, pushing him onto the bed.

He pinned him down as if he didn’t trust that he would stay. He attacked his neck, sucking and adding to marks that were already there. The onslaught on the sensitive skin brought out a cry from the kid underneath him. Blue’s arms wrapped around him. They were flush against each other now. Blue’s skin burned through the fabric of Rick’s clothes. He was burning hot from an aphrodisiac and hard from Viagra. He sat up and struggled out of his coat and flung it to the side. Their eyes locked while Blue ran his hands over his chest through his long-sleeved shirt. Rick ground their cocks together and smirked when he elicited a moan from Morty. His own breath hitched when Morty’s hands slid under his shirt, and again whenever his hands grazed over his nipples. 

His clothes finally felt too constricting. He slid off the bed and slipped the sweater over his head. Morty crawled to the edge of the bed to help him with his underwear. His erection sprang free and nearly hit Morty across the face. Without skipping a beat, he grabbed the base with his hand and slid a tongue across the underside. His eyes watched for a positive reaction. They urged him to keep going. He took the head in his mouth, his eyes never leaving his client’s, and let it slip back out with a pop. He did it again, this time taking more of him in his mouth before it popped out. Finally he took him almost to the base, and Rick pushed his hips forward, trying to sink deeper into the hot wetness. 

Morty set a slow rhythm that drove him crazy. He grabbed the hair on the back of his head and slammed his face into his pubes. He kept him there to listen to him gag for a second before letting go. He sucked faster now and Rick let out a breathy moan. Soon he pulled Morty off his dick. He wanted more and Morty knew what to expect next.

He kissed him again, seeking the taste of himself on Morty’s tongue, before sending him back onto the bed flat.

“Turn over.” Morty now lied on his stomach. Rick spread his cheeks. He ran his tongue once from bottom to top before plundering the sensitive hole. Morty panted, and he moaned when Rick’s tongue wiggled deeper inside of him. He pulled back once he was satisfied with the taste and the saliva on his chin.

“Lube?”

Morty nodded and pulled a bottle out from the drawer in the nightstand. He handed it to him and sat waiting for instructions. Rick stood up from the bed.

“On your hands and knees.” Morty assumed the position, facing away from him and completely vulnerable.

He lubed his fingers and drew circles around the entrance. Finally he slid the middle finger inside. Morty’s limbs quivered at the intrusion. He soon added a second finger and scissored him open. He crooked the two fingers upward and brushed the bundle of nerves that would undo him. Morty cried out and jerked forward. He folded his arms under him so that only his legs kept him up, and he submitted to the fingers building heat from inside him. Rick added a third finger. It still wouldn’t be enough to prepare him completely.

He removed his hand and added more lube to his fingers, this time focusing on slicking his cock. His legs shook from the contact. He positioned himself so that it rested in his crack and he slid it up and down a few times, getting a feel for it. He steadied his dick with one hand while the other rested on Morty’s hip, and he slid slowly in.

“Jesus Christ.” He pulled back out just as slowly, and then went back in. After a few more careful thrusts he became too impatient to take it slow. He set a punishing rhythm that had Morty mewling whenever his cock brushed his prostate. Jesus Christ, he wouldn’t last long, not when he sounded like that.

Too quickly, he groaned as hot cum spurted from him, filling Morty up. He pulled out his now softening dick and watched cum dribble out of the empty hole. He licked it up. He savored the taste of Morty, lube, and cum.

Blue turned around, cock still half hard. They both breathed heavily. He handed Rick a wet towel to wipe his hands and used one himself to dry off.

Wordlessly, Rick picked up the clothes he left around the room and redressed. Blue Eyes wrapped the towel around his waist; he was heading for a shower after this. Rick pulled out the stack of money and left it on the nightstand as a gift for services rendered.

He walked the walk of shame through the main room of young adults playing on their devices into the diner proper. It really was a diner, so he sat in a booth and ordered a coffee. Everyone knew this diner really wasn’t just a diner, but it did at least try to appear as a decent front.

After a coffee to clear his palate and his head, he latched the collar around his neck, turning invisible, and headed back into the street. It was now 6 AM and morning commuters began trickling out of their homes on their ways to work. He passed by them unnoticed, making sure not to get hit by one of them if they swung their arms or walked too close to him. At the apartment door, he unlatched the collar and unlocked the door. 

Morty was actually awake eating cereal and watching cartoons.

“Hey, R--Rick, I didn’t know you had -- had left.”

“Had some business to take care of.”

“Okay.” He went back to watching cartoon dinosaurs sing songs on the television.

Even he had a limit, and he had crossed it. The least he could do was shower the smell of sex and sweat and sadness from his skin before pretending he didn’t just fuck a facsimile of his grandson. He let the hot water run down his feverish body. The soap didn’t scrub away the memories of Rickless Mortys selling their bodies to survive and the realization that he had taken advantage of them to satisfy his own sick fantasies.

At least the invisible collar meant he didn’t have to look himself in the mirror if he didn’t want to.

Once he got out of the shower, Morty said in a small voice, “You look -- you l--look ....”

“I look what, Morty?” Even though he wore nothing but a towel, he still managed to make Morty shrink into the seat with his eyes.

“L--look terrible.”

“Oh yeah, thanks, yeah, that’s--that’s really what a -- what a seventy year old man wants to hear. Halfway to the grave, huh? Got a shovel?”

“S--sorry.” He scooted over to the edge of the couch and patted the cushion next to him. “Watch TV with me.”

He plopped down next to his son. “What the hell is this?” He curled his lip at the stupid animated dinosaurs.

“It’s the Land before Time. C’mon, it’s a classic.”

“I see, up there with, uh, up there with -- well, whatever.” He didn’t feel like being funny. He propped his chin up with his fist and stared at the screen with disinterest. 

Morty’s hand hovered just above his back, afraid to actually make contact. It was like trying to touch a wild animal. Rick acted unusually sullen and he thought maybe he just needed someone to tell him everything was fine. Maybe that was a stupid idea but he wasn’t the ideas guy in the duo anyway. He was the punching bag. Maybe he lost a lot of money in a bet, or maybe someone proved him wrong and he took it badly. Maybe it was one of those depressed phases that overtook him when he drank too much.

Either way, he finally did it. His hand touched his shoulder. Immediately, Rick jerked away from the hand and gave Morty a withering look. But then he went back to staring off into space and Morty did it again. This time he didn’t move, and he rubbed circles over the damp skin in an effort to soothe him. The intimacy made them both tense, but they had drawn up a silent truce.

After a while of tense silence, he turned around to study Morty’s face with an inscrutable expression. The snake didn’t seem to want to bite. 

“W--what are you doing there, pal? Buddy?” His voice wasn’t accusatory, just curious.

“You just l--looked sad.”

He sighed, but he didn’t refute it.


	11. The Only Good Idea to Be Had in This Apartment

Rick still went out “on business” but Morty never went with him. He didn’t ask why. He assumed he slipped out to meet that creepy blind guy and that Rick simply didn’t need his help. He never would have suspected that the Citadel had a red light district populated by versions of him, nor would he have suspected that sick Ricks like his grandfather visited them to cope with their immoral fantasies.

One day, his grandfather came out of the shower, dripping wet with dejection. His ribs poked out through his skin. The prosthetic was the only healthy part of him.

“H--hey, Rick.” Morty couldn’t help but worry about his grandfather’s frail physique. He really needed to cheer up and subsist off something other than forty proof.

“Hey.” 

“Wh--why don’t w--we, you know, g--go out and--and do something ... fun?”

He said nothing.

“You know, it--it’s been awhile, and I was thinking we could ... go get ice cream? Or something?”

He sighed as if ice cream was the least amusing thing in the entire multiverse. “Fine.”

They both moved to their respective rooms to get dressed, pretending that they didn’t both flutter with excitement at the prospect of leaving their apartment.

For the first time since Rick lost his leg, they left the house to do something fun.

As they walked through the well-manicured city, Morty asked the important question. “They -- they have ice cream shops here, don’t they?”

“Of course they do. You -- you think in a -- in a f--fully functional society, they don’t have ice cream?”

“I mean, I don’t know. Maybe the -- the Council of Ricks thought it would be a s-s-stupid idea and banned ice cream or -- or something.”

“Yeah, MOArty, that makes a lot of sense.” He rolled his eyes, but in a show of good nature, he pulled his grandson into a side hug. 

He let go when he started postulating about the evils of the government. “I mean -- the government is a pile of shit, Morty, but I don’t think they would bother with taking out ice cream shops.”

Like crazy old people were wont to do, he rambled on and gesticulated about evil regimes and ice cream parlors up until they hit a frozen yogurt spot.

Morty internally thanked God that Rick’s rant was now over. Oh no, wait, like always, Rick proved him wrong.

“Oh, oh, you know what else, M--Morty? Frozen yogurt. It’s a conspiracy. Not a government conspiracy, necessarily, but a con--conspiracy by health nuts wh--who think it’s -- just because it’s got bacteria in it that all of a sudden it’s--it’s healthy. Well, you know what, Morty? When you put that much sugar in something, it’s still a dessert!”

Morty pushed open the door, and a bell tinkled to announce their entrance. Like Pavlov’s dog, Rick’s mouth stopped moving and started salivating at the different flavors behind the glass.

The Morty smiled at them. “Can I help you, sirs?” I mean, who wouldn’t be polite and jovial if they worked in a frozen yogurt shop?

“Hi, yeah, could I get--?”

“Hey, do you guys have Oreos?” Rick leaned over the counter into the green-eyed Morty’s personal space.

“Actually, sir, we don’t have--.”

“What kind of an ice cream shop are you? No cookies and cream, nothing?”

“Well, well, we’re technically a frozen yogurt shop--.”

“C’mon, every two-bit place across the galaxy has cookies and cream, and--and you think you’re so special, huh?” Rick’s hand reached across the counter to grab the Morty’s apron and yank him closer. They were nose to nose. Green-eyed Morty whimpered.

“C’mon, Rick, leave him alone--.” Morty tugged at Rick’s coat sleeve. His face burned with embarrassment for the employee.

At that, he sighed and let the poor Morty free. He smoothed out his apron and like all good retail employees, apologized. “S--sorry for the inconvenience, sirs. If--if it’s Oreos you want, there’s a convenience store down the road, heh.” He nervously readjusted some items behind the counter, but he made sure not to take his eyes off Rick.

“Alright, Morty, let’s go.” He grumbled under his breath some more. The bell tinkled at his exit. Morty stayed behind for a second, mouthing a “Sorry” to the poor, wide-eyed employee. The Morty smiled and shook his head, indicating that it wasn’t an issue and implying that Ricks did this more often than not.

Morty joined his grandpa outside the door. “Where’d he say it was?”

“I--I think it’s over there.” He pointed toward a green sign that read “Morty-Mart” in happy yellow letters.

They headed toward the corner mart. This mart also had a bell that tinkled when the door opened. Inside, cool air circulated around the snack food that stood near the front of the store. A Morty appeared from farther back in the store, holding a can. “H--hi, h--can I help you with anything today?”

“Y--yes, we, uh--.”

“You guys got Oreos?”

“Oh, sure, right over here.”

He directed them to a center aisle with Oreos of every Earth and alien variety.

“We--we have a sale on Oreos, buy one, get fifty percent off. If you want.”

“Yeah, yeah, thanks.” Rick waved him off. The Morty hurried back to stocking cans in the next aisle.

“Alright, I’m thinkin’ Double Stufs. No, no, Mega Stufs.” He swiped a handful of vanilla and chocolate Mega Stufs and handed some to Morty so he could grab even more. “You think that’s enough?”

“Y--yes, Rick.” Morty struggled to keep them all in his arms. One of them slipped to the floor.

“C’mon, Morty, get it togOEEther.” He headed to the counter, not bothering to help Morty pick up the falling boxes of Oreos.

Once he had them all neatly stacked in his arms, he navigated to the front, which sounded much easier than it really was, considering he could barely see above the stack of Mega Stufs.

“There you are! Geez, Morty, what took you so long?” Morty refused to comment. Sometimes Rick was such an ass and if he tried to focus on replying, he would drop his Oreos again.

“That’ll be seventy-seven Rickbucks and twelve cents.”

Rick muttered about inflation while digging around for his wallet. He pulled out a stack of “Rickbucks,” which resembled American currency accept they had an unidentified Rick featured on the front. The store owner counted the money out and handed him his change, which also had Ricks on the front.

No one ever said Ricks weren’t self-absorbed.

They trudged home burdened by the weight of seventy bucks’ worth of Mega Stuf Oreos. They laid them all out on the living room floor. It was a magnificent haul.

“Oh crap, Rick, we forgot the ice cream.”

“No, no, it’s okay, it’s all part of the plan.”

What plan? Morty thought nervously. He didn’t like plans.

His grandpa brought out two large bowls and poured a mixture of vanilla and chocolate Oreos in each. Then, like an evil genius, he poured milk over them. He topped it off with two spoons.

Morty admired the masterpiece. “Wow, Rick, that’s--wow.”

“I’m a genius, Morty, what do you expect?”

They ate their devilishly unhealthy breakfast in contented quiet. Morty took the opportunity that Rick’s good mood provided to scoot closer to him. He didn’t flinch away, just focused on shoveling cookies in his mouth. That was a good sign. Feeling brave, he placed his hand nonchalantly on Rick’s good leg, above the knee. He stopped chewing and they both stared at the hand that didn’t belong. Miraculously, instead of moving the hand, he went back to eating. He gave the leg a hesitant squeeze, feeling the wiry muscle give under his fingers.

Somehow, Rick either didn’t notice or didn’t care that he was invading his personal space. He breathed shallowly, as if making too much of a noise would interrupt the strange intimacy. Some part of Morty really wanted to be close to his grandfather just in a normal father-son way, but he didn’t think that part of Morty was the part that goaded his hand farther up his thigh. His hand had traveled pretty far up there; he could feel the slight bump that betrayed the bottom leg of his boxer briefs.

His gaze moved from his inappropriately placed hand to his grandfather’s face and oh geez, he had stopped eating and was regarding him with that unreadable expression. He didn’t move his hand away regardless. He took his grandfather’s stillness as tacit permission to keep touching him.

Only after a few seconds of sitting at an awkward impasse did Rick finally take Morty’s hand in his and place it back in Morty’s lap.


	12. The Art of Seduction

Encouraged by his grandfather’s passivity, Morty reasoned that he could turn it up a notch without fear of vaporization. So he set out to seduce his grandfather -- or at least get on his good side.

He tried making breakfast. Omelets were easy, right?

He should have known something was off when the eggs he pulled out of the refrigerator were brown and speckled with blue spots, but he figured they just came from a blue spotted chicken. He hatched them over the sizzling pan and immediately stumbled backward when a chick fluttered over the side of the stove onto the floor.

He bent down to scoop the alien hatchling up. Its black, button eyes met with his. He fell in love. “I can’t believe I was going to cook you! What do you eat, little guy?”

When its mouth opened impossibly wide and lunged as if to bite, he dropped the bird like a hot potato and stumbled backward again, this time hitting the floor. He scooted backward while the chick waddled forward with its beak agape. He tried to swat it away, but it caught his hand in its mouth and refused to let go. He shook his hand madly, but the little guy persistently hung on. He felt its needle like teeth sink deep into his skin. A feeling of ice seeped into his arm.

“Uh, uh, R--Rick? C--can you c--come here?” he said with a tinge of panic.

“What? I’m sleeping.” However, he appeared in the doorway in his wife beater and surveyed the damage.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Morty, did you try to cook my hatchlings?” He bent down to pry the hatchling off his hand. “This sucker’s really on there tight.” He tickled the nape of its neck and it finally released its grip, falling limp to the floor. He gingerly picked it up and took it to his room.

“Come on, Morty, follow me. The--the venom’s sinking in.”

“The--the what?” He followed his grandpa into his bedroom, nervously rubbing his injured hand.

“They’re venomous, Morty. You have about five minutes until you’re in ex--excruciating pain.”

Morty’s eyes widened. “Is there an -- an antidote or something?”

“Yeah. When you raise these little guys, y--you always keep some around.” He pulled a small vial off the shelf, nestled between his collection of strange liquids. A syringe already stuck out from the top of the bottle. He injected some into the site of the injury.

“There. N--now, the antivenin itself has some negative effects. You might want to stay near the bathroom today.”

“Oh geez.”

Later, while Morty threw up his guts, Rick took the time to explain why he had eggs incubating in the refrigerator. 

“So--so one of my guys --.” He waited patiently for Morty to stop throwing up. “So one of my guys couldn’t take care of ‘em anymore. He said, ‘All you need is a fridge and some slices of meat for when they hatch.’ They--they don’t imprint, so thankfully you’re not a father, Morty.” Morty gave him the thumbs up, not bothering to look away from the toilet, before hurling again.

“They do have a n--nasty bite, though, so usually you wear gloves and long sleeves.”

Morty said weakly, still staring into the watery abyss, “Wh--where are our normal eggs? Wh--why would you put them where our regular eggs go?”

“I mean, w--we haven’t been shopping in a while .... We, uh, we ran out. And I didn’t think you were gonna reach in there and make breakfast with them. I mean, they--they look nothing like chicken eggs!”

“I just th--thought they were some -- some new breed or s--something ....”

“Morty. Ugh, Morty, I--.” He facepalmed then rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“I know, I know, I’m an idiot. Jus--just leave me alone.”

So Morty’s first attempt at seduction went horribly wrong.

***

Take two, a few days after the horrible stomach pain ended. Keeping with the theme of breakfast food, he tried pancakes this time. He reached far in the back for the regular white eggs, studiously avoiding any funny looking items like blue spotted eggs or floating creatures in jars. 

In trying to crack the regular, non-alien egg, he stuck his thumb into the shell and egg leaked all over him. Eventually he got it right, but not without curses directed at his own stupidity.

The kitchen after he finished the batter was a mess. Flour coated the countertops. Batter had seeped into one of the eyes. Morty himself was covered in egg. And he hadn’t even started cooking yet when his grandpa wandered in.

He scratched his back. “Geez, Morty, what dIEeeid you do in here?”

“I--I was -- I was trying to make --.”

He peered into the bowl of batter. “You know you’re supposed to cook this, right, Morty?” 

“I--I know--.” His whole body felt red.

“Did -- did you get pancake mix on the ceiling?” He started laughing, a full out of body experience.

Morty, on the verge of tears, said, “Yo--you’re an asshole, R--Rick.” He dumped the entire bowl in the trash. When the trashcan lid wouldn’t close on the mixing bowl, he stomped into his room and slammed the door. He left his grandpa still laughing in the other room.

What was he even hoping to achieve again?

***

Oh, right. When Rick wasn’t being a complete asshole, he was an irresistible natural disaster that swept Morty into danger every week. Since they were trying to keep a low profile, the adventures weren’t high stakes, just petty thievery or pranks with a few gunshots exchanged every now and then.

One time their petty thievery got them in a tight situation. Literally, they were in a tight situation. They were cramped and tangled in a broom closet in who-knows-what-galaxy. The only thing that illuminated their enclosed space was the rectangle of light that outlined the door. 

“I hate you, Rick.”

“Morty, this was -- okay, this was a hiccup in our plans, but it--it’s--I got this.”

“A hiccup? We almost died! They have guard dog ... things here. Was that--was dying really worth it?”

“Yes, Morty, because I needed that schematic.”

“What even is it?”

“I’ll tell you later.” His knee shifted into Morty’s crotch. He started sweating. If he popped a boner here ....

“N--no, you--you’ll tell me now.”

“Okay, fine, MoOORty.” Under his breath: “Not like you’ll understand it.”

Morty elbowed Rick. His skin crawled with sweat. He could smell alcohol, aftershave, and adrenaline off the other man. 

“Listen, it’s for -- it’s for building another invisibility device.”

“But didn’t you say that it--that you couldn’t make them anymore?”

“No, I said they were toOOogh expensive to make, not that it was impossible. Listen, nothing’s impossible for Rick-fucking-Sanchez.”

It was so easy, Morty could just lean forward a little bit and get him on the lips, and he couldn’t move away. But why would he want to do that? Being this close was weird. It made him feel weird. A mixture of distaste and desire. He was uncomfortably aware of their ungainly legs tangled together and how their arms were pressed into each other’s sides.

Rick pulled out his phone and Morty elbowed him again. “What? It’s not like -- not like we’re going anywhere. We’re stuck here until they call off the search.”

“I know, just--what if they hear us?”

“I’m not gonna play any videos, stupid. I’m just getting on Reddit.”

Morty rolled his eyes. But his breath caught in his chest when Rick leaned over to show him something. Somehow they were stuck even closer together when he did that. Thank goodness it was dark and that it was Rick’s fake leg that kneed him in the crotch.

They were stuffed together face to face with Morty’s legs wrapped around him. Luckily Rick was too absorbed in Earth memes to notice how the proximity was affecting his grandson.

At this point he was completely absorbed in the sensation of closeness, probably the only intimate moment they would ever share. And it was all due to their tripping the security system when they entered the safety deposit box code wrong the second time. He wished he could get out and he wished it would never end.

The sound of slithering on the other side of the door stopped. The cessation of noise alerted them that the search was over. They had gone home for the night. They sat, breathless, trying to catch the hint of any further noise outside.

When Rick thought it was safe, he leaned forward to open the door, in the process pushing Morty’s face against the wall. Maybe it was creepy but Morty shivered uncontrollably. He was so close it was unbearable. Once the door creaked open, they tumbled out, all legs and arms.

They portaled home before anyone could intercept them and before Rick could see Morty’s embarrassing erection.

Morty hid in his room the rest of that night. More fuel had been added to the fire.

***

They pretended they didn’t spend all night last night cuddling in a broom closet. As far as Rick was concerned, everything was normal. Morty’s stomach twisted in knots after that night. He was officially head over heels, unapologetically lustful. 

He watched his grandpa study the schematics through the open door of his room. He ran his hands through his hair and scratched his head. He was completely absorbed. Morty just wanted to go in there and knock the blueprint out of his hand and attack him. But he also had a self preservation instinct that prevented him from jumping into the jaws of death.

So he stared like a lovestruck teenager at his own grandfather, not even looking away when he turned toward the eyes that burned the hairs on the back of his neck.

“What are you looking at?”

“Huh?” Smooth. He didn’t even bother refuting the fact that he was staring.

“You’re, uh, kinda freaking me out, Morty.” He rubbed the back of his head nervously. Was he infected with the love bug? The love bug was the common name for the alien fungus that infected complex organisms like humans, causing them to try to seduce any other organism in reach to spread their spores.

“You weren’t on GXZ-230, were you?”

“No. What even is that?”

“It’s a planet in the Horsehead Nebula.” On seeing Morty’s confused face, he said, “Never mind.” 

Clearly his grandson had been infected with something. He acted funny. He acted ... suspicious.

He always tried to do nice things for him and sure, it was nice to be appreciated for once, but it went above and beyond what a dutiful grandson should do for his grandfather. It went into the romantic territory and it made him think that he had picked up an alien parasite at some point. It wasn’t all that unlikely. What was more unlikely was that he did these kind but misguided acts of his own, unclouded volition, as an attempt at conciliation or even worse, seduction.

Take the pancake incident, for example. The first time it happened, he blew it off as Morty wanting pancakes and failing miserably. The second time it happened, he made sure the batter wasn’t on the ceiling but he burnt the crap out of the poor pancakes. Why would he bother cooking when cereal served its no-bake purpose just fine? What did he want?

The incident on the couch sealed the deal: Morty was definitely harboring some alien parasite.

They watched TV that evening like they did every evening. Mindless explosions and displays of machismo kept their attention until Rick realized that Morty’s head rested on his shoulder. Okay, that was normal. Not normal for them, but maybe normal behavior between regular, loving family members. He played it off as Morty being worn out from taking the Citadel by storm and losing money in an arcade.

He didn’t want to believe that his grandson actually loved and trusted him. It made it too hard to resist being nice -- or even romantic -- in return. He feared that if he got too close, he would let his guard down and it would all be over.

Every time Morty tried to get close, Rick pushed him away. He chalked it up to not wanting to get infected. He saw the love in the little twerp’s eyes and he couldn’t stand it.

***

Morty saw the disinterest in Rick’s eyes and he couldn’t stand it. He tried being nice by appealing to Rick’s stomach, it just went terribly wrong. He either burnt the food or it literally exploded or, in one case, it bit him and sent him to the bathroom for two nights.

He tried not so subtly feeling him up on the couch, but he just looked at him like he had contracted some alien parasite.

Had he tried just ... telling him? Surely it couldn’t be worse than this continual uncertainty. Except for the part where he could end up jeopardizing their temporary truce. No more Rick and Morty. He recalled the voucher for a free Morty that Rick insisted was only for grave emergencies. Well, certainly his Morty turning into an incestuous creep was an emergency.

“H--hey, R--Rick?”

He grunted in response. He was soldering something in his room. He looked intensely enough that his eyes melted the metal wire. Morty stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and waited for him to stop. He finally put down the soldering iron and asked him what he wanted.

“Um, I just wanted to say ....”

Rick drank from his flask while the boy stammered. Oh boy, this was going to be good.

“I, uh--.” He twirled his fingers, suddenly not so brave.

“Morty, I don’t have all day.” He took another swig. Whatever was getting him all worked up was going to require a few drinks to stomach.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and spat it out in one go. “I really like you and I don’t think it’s in the normal way please don’t replace me with another Morty.”

“... What?”

Suddenly he felt strong hands take hold of his shoulders. “Morty, open your eyes.”

He poked one eye open, realized Rick wasn’t going to eat him, and then opened the other one. Rick peered deeply into his eyes, maybe a little too insistently. He wasn’t expecting that reaction, in any case, but it went over better than he thought it would. Rick’s hands moved to his face, thumbs turning down his lower lids. “L--listen to me, Morty, have you -- have you been anywhere with my portal gun? I need to know. And--and don’t l--lie to me, I can see the history.”

“N--no .... Why?”

“Come in here.” He dragged him farther into the room.

He pulled out a pocket flashlight and shined it across Morty’s eyes. “Okay, no worms, pupil dilation normal,” he said to himself.

Then he ran a metal detector wand over him. No beeps. “W--what, what am I doing, the exterior would shield the metal body from detection ....” Morty sweated nervously. Was Rick going senile?

He pulled an X-Acto knife from his front pocket. “Okay, if--if you’re not a robot, this’ll pinch.” He yanked Morty’s hand close to him and poked an opening into his finger. Blood welled from the hole. “Good, good.” He shoved containers out of the way, then rifled through drawers until he pulled out an empty biological samples vial, about the length of a pinky finger. He squeezed the finger until enough blood filled the small vial.

“O--okay, Morty, I gotta run some tests. Until then, don’t--don’t come out of your room. Actually, just sit in the living room and watch TV. But don’t go outside.” He punctuated his command with a suspicious squint at Morty.

Morty turned around and walked back to the couch in a daze. What just happened?

A few hours later, Rick emerged from his bedroom, still wearing goggles and holding the vial of blood in his hand triumphantly. “You--you’re clean, Morty. I checked. No _Cordyceps_ , no brain worms, no foreign bacteria. Just good old, clean Morty blood.”

“Heh, c--cool.” 

“Now, I couldn’t test for everything in the universe, you might still be infEAUGhcted.”

“Oh.” He hoped Rick wouldn’t put him in quarantine like he did that one time.

“Look, I--I’m not gonna put you in--in quarantine. If you have something, then I’ve prob’ly already got it.”

He plopped next to Morty and flicked the TV to some interdimensional MTV that showed dogs baying into the microphone.

“A--at least this MTV plays music, am I right?” He elbowed Morty into laughing.

“Y--yeah.” He rubbed his assaulted arm. Rick seemed to totally forget what he had said earlier. Or he didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t know which was worse.

***

Rick never forgot anything, especially when he had been mostly sober upon witnessing it. Morty had all but admitted that he liked his grandfather way too much. But he did the tests. He had put a spot of blood under the microscope, nothing unusual. For the hell of it, he subjected a small sample of it to concentrated levels of radiation. Nope. No unusual reaction when he mixed some blood with a small drop of hydrogen peroxide. It bubbled, but no worms unraveled under his microscope after the fact. He had to admit, after a battery of tests that included a DNA test to verify his son’s identity, that his blood was likely clean, and Morty had admitted his most disturbing flight of fancy of his own free will. He knew the kid was dumb, but this rose above and beyond.

He toyed with the idea that his Morty had been replaced with a spy or an android, or with an android spy. But androids didn’t bleed when you pricked them, unless the manufacturers of said androids were intent on surmounting that feat of engineering just so they could trip Rick up when he pricked his grandson in the finger. And they certainly didn’t bleed with real human blood with real Morty DNA. No adversary of his was that thorough. Unless his adversary was another Rick. He couldn’t well vivisect his grandson just to satisfy his curiosity. Either he had to accept that his grandson harbored some secret incestuous thoughts or that he had misunderstood majorly what Morty implied. For once in his life, he considered the fact that maybe he had heard or understood wrong. Maybe he was drunker than he realized that day. Or maybe the blast that took his leg also destroyed his ears and fried his brain.

In any case, he couldn’t take advantage of Morty. He was legally an adult, but to Rick, anybody under the age of about forty was still a kid. Actually, anybody at all was a kid to him in regards to intellect. 

Wait, what the hell was he even thinking? He thought this line of thought had ended long ago. He had stopped seeing red light Mortys awhile back out of shame, maybe the only time shame had ever factored into a decision of his. Anyway, it was out of the question and Rick didn’t want it. End of story.

***

Morty pretended that the world’s hardest confession never left his lips. Clearly Rick wasn’t interested. He had made a big show of testing Morty for parasites, fungus, and bacteria, then dropped the topic like he did everything else that bored him. After the nightly shame wank, he kicked himself for ever having mentioned it.

He didn’t notice that Rick drank more than ever and that it was all due to him.

Usually he lazed around shit drunk and often high. At least he had the decency to lay off the smoking while Morty was in the room, though recently he had gotten careless about leaving burning blunts laying in the ashtray, whose smoke caused Morty to cough. And yes, he now smoked enough that he had pulled out the ashtray from the depths of his bedroom and had it in a place of honor as the centerpiece of their dining room table.

Again, Rick’s depressive phase precluded them from doing anything fun.

One day, Rick didn’t bother snuffing out his blunt when Morty came out of his room. Morty made a show of coughing and glaring through the haze at his grandfather. The blazing point of light danced through the fog as Rick used it to gesture at him.

“Hey. Hey, try this. C--c’mon, don’t be a pussy, Morty.”

“No, I’m not -- I’m not smoking that.”

“Why? You afraid it’s got Grandpa’s germs on it?”

“No, it’s -- I don’t want to get high.”

“What, they do that D.A.R.E shit with you in school? Is -- are you afraid your dick’s gonna fall off?”

“No, I just like being sober.”

“Morty, you haven’t lived until you’ve gotten high once. C’mon, do it. It’s -- it’ll be an adventure. You know how many times you--you’ve almost died? And--and y--you’re scared to toke up with your old man?”

Morty, out of an urge to please his grandfather and out of an urge to not look like a pussy, succumbed to the peer pressure.

“F--fine. H--hand it over.”

“I--I’ll even relight it for you.” Rick held the tip against the flame of the lighter. He handed the burning blunt to Morty.

“Just put it to your lips and suck in. And hold it in as long as you can.”

“O--okay ....” He stared at it for a second in trepidation. He’d had smoke in his lungs before from the burning ship, and he didn’t much like the searing feeling in his chest. His grandfather’s sneer spurred him on, however. He held it to his lips and sucked in for maybe half a second before spluttering and coughing.

“G--geez, R--Rick.” He couldn’t seem to get enough air no matter how much smoke he coughed out. His lungs burned.

“You need some water, pal?” Rick laughed and got up to get a glass. “Here.” Morty drank gladly. The tepid water felt like heaven against his charred throat.

“Didn’t know you were -- you were gonna be such a girl about it.”

Morty’s eyes watered. He handed back the hateful thing hurriedly. So far he felt nothing but pain.

“Thank you very much.” Rick drew from it again. The smoke curling from his lips made him look like a dragon. He was a fire breathing dragon in appearance as well as deed.

“Ready?” Morty nodded. He was determined to get high now to see what all the hype was about.

He maybe held in the smoke for a full second before coughing it out again. He chugged the water to quell the burn.

“Geez, Morty, you’re a -- a real lightweight.” Morty glared as he drank some more. His head started to feel heavy.

“H--hey, I--I think I feel something.” His words sounded so slow and heavy. They thudded onto the ground like apples falling from a tree. Bonk, bonk. The lack of oxygen hit him in the head and the chest. That was where it all went, the fire inside him consumed all the oxygen in his lungs. He still couldn’t breathe deeply without coughing from deep in his chest.

“Already?” Rick started to laugh again. Maybe Morty felt something other than oxygen deprivation, because his laugh no longer grated at his nerves so much.

“L--leave me alone,” he eventually said. “It’s my first time.”

He was definitely high or buzzed or something. Rick’s laugh almost sounded benevolent. Like a slightly more evil Santa Claus. A dark, gravelly chuckle.

Morty’s eyes got caught up in the lines of Rick’s face. He traced the frown lines, the crow’s feet, the lines of his forehead as they shot up and--.

 

“What the hell are you looking at, Morty?”

“Huh?”

“God, you really are high. That’s enough for you.” He puffed at the blunt some more. “Two whole hits. Not even that.” He rolled his eyes. After a second: “You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“Staring at me like -- what, am I that good looking?” He flashed him his laziest Sanchez smile in an effort to impress the addled kid.

Morty was thunderstruck for some reason. When was the last time he smiled like that? He had sat in the middle of the floor while his grandfather took up the couch, but after that he scooted closer. He now sat at his grandfather’s feet. His mouth was unapologetically agape.

“You’re, uh, kinda freakin’ me out, Morty. You know, n--no one’s gonna get high with you if you act like that.”

Morty snapped out of it. He almost seemed lucid until he said, “Can I ... touch your face?” His hands itched to trace those lines around his mouth.

“What? D--did you hear what I said? Morty, you’re being weird.” He paused, perturbed by Morty’s strange behavior, but intrigued too. Like any scientist, he had to explore where this would go. “Ugh. Fine. Go nuts.”

Morty immediately leapt forward like a predator, hands outstretched. He was completely out of his mind, but apparently so was Rick because he allowed this. His hands cupped the sides of his face. He could feel the gray stubble that grew up the sides and overlapped to become his sideburns. Rick’s eyes were closed. That was probably a good thing because now his eyes could roam wherever they wanted. His hands moved into his wild hair. It was much softer than he expected, almost wispy, but there was so much of it. He had the remnants of a fine head of hair. If only he took better care of it....

Morty’s hands combed through his hair. Rick, miraculously, not only allowed it but seemed to lean into his touch. His head bowed a little bit, enough that Morty took it as assent to continue. At this point he was literally on top of his grandfather pawing through his hair and somehow he hadn’t kicked him off yet. When his hands traveled down to his neck, thumbs pressed into the dip where his clavicles met, he finally opened his eyes and held Morty’s wrists in his hands. 

“Al--alright, th--that’s enough, Morty.” He didn’t look angry at least. He actually looked almost ... relaxed? He was certainly high as fuck. He pushed Morty’s hands away. “I’m never getting high with you again.” Morty slid back down to the floor. He wore a goofy smile. The corners of Rick’s mouth twitched despite himself. “You clearly can’t handle your weed. At all. You should probably go to bed.”

Morty nodded, not quite listening, just watching his mouth move.

“Hey. EUArth to Morty. Did you hear me?”

Morty nodded again. No, he hadn’t heard at all. Rick slumped back into the couch cushions and chose to ignore the weirdo. He was asleep in a few minutes, even though Morty acted unpredictable enough that he shouldn’t have let his guard down in case he decided to get cuddly or something.

When he woke up with a start sometime that night, Morty had gone to bed.


	13. Won’t You Take Me to Mortytown?

Morty had crawled into Rick’s bed, stripped down to his boxers and wrapped up in the smell of Rick in the sheets. He slept like the dead for many hours until he eventually woke undisturbed. He was almost certain that Rick would have kicked him out, but instead he was soldering that chip from the other day. He seemed totally oblivious to Morty’s presence.

“Hey,” he croaked. He still felt a tinge out of sorts, and his mouth had dried up overnight. 

Rick turned around to say “Hey” and then turned back to the computer chip. He didn’t seem to care or question why Morty was in his bed inside the sacred four walls he called his bedroom.

“I’m h--starving. Can we get IHOP?”

He set down the soldering iron. He would never get any work done until the kid had something to eat. He knew how Morty got when he was hungry. “Make it Shoney’s and we have a deal.”

Rick took them to a shady restaurant in Mortytown, the only place that Shoney’s dared rear its cheap, ugly head. Most Ricks probably had some aversion to the place, but his Rick loved it, so he went. Food was food.

The only customers in the restaurant were Rickless Mortys with under-eye circles and track marks that danced up their skinny arms. Morty did eventually spot a Rick without a Morty in a trench coat near the back.

“Rick, I don’t really like this place.”

“What do you mean you don’t -- eeuuugh -- like this place? This is like my second home. No, no, emotionally, this is my only home.”

“Yeah, but look at all these Mortys. They look so sad.”

“Yeah, poor Rickless bastards.”

“Sh--shouldn’t we help them?”

“It’s none of our business, Morty. Now eat your food or I will.” He stared lustfully at Morty’s half-eaten stack of pancakes. Morty picked at his food half-heartedly. He had lost his appetite.

“I just ... feel bad for them, is all.”

“I know. Your heart is too big. Y--you’ll never get anywhere like that, you know. Th--the only reason I’m here is because I learned to mind my own bEUGhusiness.”

“Y--you know what, Rick? You might be h--heartless but I’m not. I’m gonna help these Mortys.”

“How?” He belched to emphasize his indifference.

“I--I don’t know. But I’m gonna -- I’m gonna do something.”

He shrugged in response. He reached across the table to pick at Morty’s plate with his fork. Morty let him. His thoughts turned toward how to help the “poor Rickless bastards.”

As they left the Shoney’s and approached their ship, a Morty materialized out of the shadows. He held a bottle of Windex and a wad of newspaper. “C--can I -- can I clean your ship?” Rick got in without answering, and Morty gave the other Morty a pitying look. He mouthed an “I’m sorry” as they flew away. He kept looking back at the dejected Morty who watched them leave.

“How can you -- how can you not be upset by that?” His face flushed with indignation at Rick’s apathy.

“Look, I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life. If I cried over every homeless kid, I’d -- I wouldn’t be seventy percent water anymore.” He steered the ship with one hand and pulled a bottle from under the seat with the other. He drank periodically all the way home, pointedly ignoring any mean or exasperated looks directed his way.

***

Morty really would help those poor Mortys, he promised himself. He thought it was only right. Rick was right, of course, his heart was too big, but his grandpa’s heart was too small. Couldn’t he start a charity or something? A homeless shelter? They had Morty daycare, but there weren’t enough openings, and a lot of Mortys whose Ricks passed away became homeless druggies when their money dried up and their hope died. Daycare refused to take drug-dependent Mortys. Some of them pulled out of their situations and became business owners, but that was rare in a Rick-dominated society. And the government barely acknowledged the problem at all, it seemed from Morty’s cursory Internet search. For a Rickless Morty, especially one who fell into debt or fell in with drug dealers, there usually were few resources available.

He thought about starting a charity, but applying for a grant from the government seemed impossible, and getting Ricks to independently donate funds seemed just as improbable. The only people he could really appeal to were fellow Mortys, and many of them were attached to heartless Ricks who confiscated their money and who would outright refuse a request from their Mortys to donate to a Morty fund. Independent business owner Mortys were his only real hope.

He remembered that nice Morty at the clothing store who told him that Mortys had to stick together. He would be the perfect place to start. Now he just had to find him.

Small stores like that rarely had websites. He could check the phone book, but then he realized that a technologically advanced society created by the smartest men in the universe wouldn’t bother with printing out phone books when everything was available online anyway. He couldn’t remember where the store was located exactly, just that it was near the spot where they crashed.

He had no choice but to ask Rick. He knew everything, including where they first landed.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because, uh--.”

“Don’t bother coming up with an excuse. I don’t really care. We landed near the outskirts of town, near the intersection of 512th West Street and 512th North Street.” Morty wondered at his ability to remember that, but not for long. He was on a mission to find that clothing store.

Later that day, he asked if he could borrow the ship.

“Why?” He looked Morty up and down suspiciously.

“I wanted to, uh, go somewhere.”

“Well, I figured that much, Morty. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to see a -- a friend.”

“You have friends?” He laughed at his own joke, but he did at least proffer the keys. Morty took them in a huff.

He was going to find that Morty.

He landed the ship a little jerkily in a nearby parking lot. Usually, his grandpa took over takeoff and landing and would only let Morty drive when they were in deep space. His skills were rusty, but like driving or biking, you never really forgot how to navigate a ship once you learned.

The outskirts were where the rich Ricks and Mortys lived. This area was well kept. No litter skittered across the sidewalks, no weeds waved hello from the cracks in the pavement, there were no cracks in the pavement. He whistled while he walked, hoping he didn’t look too out of place. Mortys looked funny when they weren’t serving as sidekicks. He recognized the awning of the clothing store immediately and he pulled open the door. A rush of cold air blew his hair back. The same Morty ran the front. Or at least he thought that was the same Morty. He had the same shiny, well-groomed head of brown curls.

“Hello, can I help you?”

“Hi, uh, you probably don’t remember, but I came in without pants a few months ago and--.”

The Morty smiled politely, eyes twinkling, encouraging him to continue. He wasn’t used to talking to a nice person, and he started to trip over his words. His mission suddenly seemed futile, and it hadn’t even left his mouth yet.

“Uh, well, yeah, I, uh, I came in without pants, and you helped me find a pair, and I always thought you were super nice and--.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir, I, err, don’t usually date customers. I’m sorry.” He batted his long, feminine eyelashes.

“No, no! That’s not what I meant.” He blushed and backtracked. “I was actually going to ask you to help me.”

“Help you ... find a date?”

“No! That’s not it. Please listen.”

Morty listened. That was a good sign, at least.

“I -- I wanted to start a charity.”

“And you ...?”

“A charity for Mortys. And I wanted you to help me.” When he saw Morty’s dubious expression, he quickly added, “You were the one who told me that Mortys had to stick together.”

“Yes, I do remember saying that, actually.”

“And I -- I took it to heart. Ricks are cruel, Morty. I saw Mortytown. Have you -- have you ever been there?”

Morty nodded, his face losing his cheerfulness.

“They’re -- they’re just so sad. I wanted to help them, and--and I didn’t know where to start, so I started here--.”

“And you are hoping that I’ll help you? Why me?”

“L--like I said, you seemed really nice, and you told me--.”

“I don’t make much money. I mean, I get by.” The business owner shifted from foot to foot and looked away. Like most Mortys, he hated to say no or hurt someone’s feelings.

“Maybe you could just -- maybe just advertise for me? I could print out cards, or we could start a donation jar. A customer might slip in a few pennies. I mean, it’s better than nothing.” A pause. “This is really important to me.”

Morty seemed reluctant, but he relented. “O--okay. I can put out a jar.”

“Thank you.” He mustered a relieved smile from the depths of his heart. He turned to leave, but not before saying “Thanks again” to the Morty behind the counter.

He yelled at his back, “Mortys have to stick together!”

Morty’s heart soared. He had one supporter he could count on in the infinite universe.

***

He doodled posters for his charity. He still didn’t have a name for it and he was a terrible artist. He was much better at drafting than drawing. He decided to abandon the idea of drawing a sad little boy pouting for money. Besides, he didn’t want them to seem helpless. They weren’t helpless, just down on their luck and stomped on by the upper class.

Now he doodled Ricks stomping on Mortys. That might prove useful in internal publications. Really ham it up for the members. A shadow fell across his papers. He gazed upward at a brown trouser leg. Then he gazed at the white sleeve that yanked him to his feet. Finally, reluctantly, he gazed at the face of the owner of the trouser leg and the sleeve.

Oh good, he wasn’t mad. But he was drunk, which was worse.

“Guess where we’re -- eugh -- going?”

“Wh--where, Rick?”

“You--you remember that, that invisibility collar? And -- and those plans we got from the storage unit?” When Morty, like a good boy, didn’t say anything about the creepy Rick and the close encounter in the broom closet, he went on, “Well, well, I finally located a crystal that I can use to make you one.”

“Do--is there going to be a -- a reason that I’ll need one?”

“I hope not. But come on, this’ll be f--Eugh--un.” Morty sighed but dutifully followed his grandfather into the living room. He kicked dust out of the rug while his grandfather revealed his master plan to use pheromones to pass as women on Gazorpazorp and steal the prism from their leader’s jewelry box.

“That’s--that’s a t--terrible idea. I’m not going.”

“Oh yes you are.”

“No, I’m not. L--last time I had anything to do with th--that place, I became a father.”

“Then keep your dick in your pants this time.”

“W--wait a minute, we might smell like women, I guess? But we won’t look like women. I mean, th--they’re very visual creatures, th--they’ll know something’s wrong.”

“Yeah, I know that, but your old man has thought of everything. I mean, with all due respect, Morty.... No, there is no r--respect due, you’d make a really ugly chick.”

“I would make an u--ugly chick?! You--you’re one to talk!” He couldn’t believe he was vouching for his attractiveness as a woman, but like always, he took the bait whenever Rick dangled it in front of him.

“But, but! As I was _saying_ , Morty, I already got that figured out. I got us these disguises.”

They were far too skimpy for Morty’s liking.

“No, I c--can’t wear that. And if--if I can’t pull it off, wh--what makes you think you can? H--how drunk are you?”

“I’ll have you know, Morty, I -- look, I’m not as -- as -- well, I’m not as good looking as I used to be, but I can still rock a skirt.”

“How would you even know that?!”

“I’ve been in business a long time, kid.”

After all was said and done, they looked like a couple of dykes but they smelled divine. 

“W--wow, th--this is some pretty good stuff. Where did you get this?”

“I made it. Everything that makes women smell good, th--that’s us right now. It’s foolproof.”

***

It was absolutely not foolproof. Due to the Gazorpian women’s innate politeness, no one wanted to call the ugly women out on the fact that they might be men, especially when they smelled as nice as they did, but eventually someone tattled and they were currently cuffed and escorted to female jail, whatever that was like.

“N--nice going, Rick,” Morty hissed.

“I -- how was I supposed to know they were going to search us? W--was I supposed to chop my dick off for the sake of the disguise?”

“I mean -- no, but -- couldn’t you have, I don’t know, taped it down or something?”

“What, are you -- what, have you done this before? Have you ever actually taped your dick down? It’s not pleasant.”

Morty was a little shocked at the implication that Rick would even know. He didn’t seem like the type to want to tape down what should be free. Which he guessed was the reason why he didn’t do it this time.

“You men are absolutely disgusting,” their stunning, beautiful, womanly guard said.

They quieted down and walked in silence, the occasional insult at each other’s manhood notwithstanding.

After an interminable walk (the skirts caused serious chafing), they arrived at the city’s maximum security prison. There, they were placed with the other women who received worse punishments than the silent treatment, of which there were very few. Thankfully, or not thankfully, the warden assigned Rick and Morty the same cell.

Thankfully because Rick could now orchestrate their umpteenth prison break. Not thankfully because of the following exchange:

Female jail had much nicer amenities than regular intergalactic jail. Like all prisons, they had been searched and forced to change into the tacky orange outfits. But on the bright side, the cell had a shower stocked with an actual bar of soap.

“Morty, check this out! It’s an actual bar of soap. I didn’t think they still had these on Gazorpazorp.”

“Why wouldn’t they have bars of soap?”

“Because women here, th--they’re so prissy. They have to have bubble baths here. You know. You had a girlfriend once.”

A prison guard walked by at the very instant he said that. She stuck her nose up at him and continued walking.

“Pfft. Well? You weren’t lying about her, were you?”

“I mean -- yes.” Rick grinned. He corrected himself. “I mean yes that I had a girlfriend.”

“And she was a priss, wasn’t she?”

“What does this even have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know, I’m just making conversation, Morty.” Rick sat on the bottom bunk bed, crossing his legs. The bar of soap squirted from his hand. “Oh no, Morty.” He acted shocked. “I dropped the soap.”

They both stared at it, then at each other.

“Pick it up.”

“I--I’m not picking it up.” Morty crossed his arms.

“Well, neither am I. I have standards, I--I refuse to be a part of some cheap joke about prison rape.”

They left the soap laying on the floor. They didn’t plan on staying the night in prison, nor did they plan on taking a shower or bending down to pick up the soap and subsequently having their ass kicked by the other while they were bent double, vulnerable.

Rick rolled up his pant leg, revealing the prosthetic limb. He pulled a small metal pin from the calf. He unrolled his pants again. He peered through the metal slats of the rectangular window in the door. Female jail, even maximum security female prison, had fewer guards than regular intergalactic jail, as it turned out.

He put his finger to his lips, signaling quiet, then flicked a button on the side of the metal pin. The green laser that it emitted not only buzzed while the button was depressed, but also while it worked, it made the loudest, most obvious sound of screeching metal as it cut through the door. Morty’s teeth gritted and he tried to see to either side of the darkened hallway for guards. He prayed to an alien God that no one would walk by at that moment.

He had three-fourths of the hole cut out when Morty heard footsteps approaching despite the sound of the squealing sheet metal drowning out all noise. The boots of the woman must be nearby indeed. The footsteps changed cadence; she now ran in their direction.

“Rick, hurry!”

The thick metal piece dropped out into the hallway. The hole perfectly framed the muscular, scary legs of several women as they avoided the falling puzzle piece.

“Run!”

Many hands grabbed Morty at once, and not in his wildest dreams did he ever believe that drowning in a sea of tall women would be a bad thing. Rick cleared them out quickly. No matter what feminists believed, women were no match for a man’s natural strength. Or at least not the unnatural strength of an old man with a metal leg.

Rick grabbed Morty by the collar and started running. Morty stumbled along after him. He only started breathing again when he let go, once they exited the prison building. Once out, they realized they had no way of escaping the planet; they had confiscated the portal gun earlier that day.

“Shit, we have to go back!”

“Aww geez.”

He suddenly stuck an arm out to prevent Morty’s running away. “No, no, I got a better idea.” They both stared at the pink ship parked outside.

Again, the stereotypes proved right. The women of Gazorpazorp were not engineers by nature. Rick easily hotwired the ship and they sped off. Luckily, the women didn’t bother pursuing. Gas was expensive, yo.

“All that for nothing.” Morty huddled up glumly in the cozy leather chair.

“Don’t speak so soon.” Rick held up a rhinestone the size of his pinky nail. His eyes sparkled just like it did in the light of the dash.

“Is that -- is that it?”

“Yep. Plucked it off one of the girls’ belts. Can you believe they use these for decoration?” He twirled it around in his fingers. “These things are priceless.”

“Well, uh, y--you know how women are, heh. Th--they like expensive rocks.”

They both started laughing.


	14. Citizens of the Citadel

“Hey, uh, Morty, how’s the donation jar going?”

“Oh, it’s actually going really good, sir.” He beamed and gestured toward the mason jar with a hand drawn sign that said “Morty Charity” in red marker, with an arrow pointing into the coin slot cut into the lid. A few coins and bills lay on the bottom.

“Is -- is that all?” He hoped that didn’t sound too impertinent. He offered thanks to the anonymous donors in his head.

“I mean, for now, yes, but I just put it out yesterday. I’m a small business. A lot of Mortys come in and spend their last dollars on a pair of pants.” Morty’s face betrayed some disappointment. “But, but they let me keep the change, and I put it in the jar.

“Truthfully, though,” the business owner said confidentially, in a lower voice, “the Ricks that came in yesterday didn’t like it. They made faces at me.”

“Are you -- don’t they always do that?”

“Well, I suppose. But maybe it seemed like they had more ... venom than usual. They escorted their Mortys out pretty quickly once they paid the tab and saw the jar.”

Morty thought nothing more of it; Ricks were just dicks.

***

“MOUghrty, check this out!” He held up a bracelet that resembled the collar he obtained from creepy Rick.

“Is that an -- an invisibility collar? Like the one you have?”

“No, well, this one goes around your wrist. I -- I remembered your inability to put on a collar when we split timelines, so I thought a bracelet would be easier.”

“Oh, um. Thanks?” Should he be insulted or grateful?

“You’re welcome.” He threw it to Morty, whose slippery hands caught it but then let fall to the floor before picking it up for real. Morty pretended to ignore his grandfather’s snort.

What would a teenaged boy do with an invisibility bracelet?

“Actually, no, give me that back.” Morty sighed and handed it back. Any half-baked plans were dashed the moment it left his hands. Of course his grandfather would think of every plan his tiny brain could come up with before he took two breaths. Then, realizing his mistake, he had taken the bracelet back, to be used only on authorized missions.

***

Morty A-02 hated daycare. Why would they even call it that? Oh yeah, because Ricks sucked and they chose to take every precaution to prevent Mortys from feeling the least bit self-confident. Daycare was pretty much an orphanage for Mortys that lost their Ricks. Sometimes a poor, grieving Rick would come by and snatch one of them, but even the smartest men in the universe held a little bit of suspicion when it came to Mortys from dimensions A through C. Mortys from those dimensions generally lost their Ricks to suicide, and maybe they thought subconsciously that it was the fault of the sidekicks because they were unable to prevent it. He was fairly sure every Rick hated themselves the most and secretly wanted a pal that would talk them down from a genuine effort at self-injury or death.

He couldn’t help but feel like it was his fault for losing his only friend. He should have known he wasn’t feeling right. He should have been there to stop it.

Rick A-02 worked feverishly in his garage. Something of the utmost importance, he said. For once, he refused to ask for Morty’s help, told him to just take a break and watch some television with the family. Go eat dinner. He would be out in a minute. At the time it just looked like a cool helmet under the desk lamp. At the time, he didn’t notice how Rick’s hands shook.

A bang from the garage. Everyone started from their chairs, but they sat back down when Morty shot toward the door first. Maybe they felt in their bones that something was very wrong and thought Morty was the only one equipped to handle it. He threw the door open. Rick slumped over the desk, blood pooling under his head. He had blown his brains out.

He counted nine shotgun shells. The helmet was a work of art. He left no note. It was just like him to leave without alerting anyone of his intentions. At least this time Morty knew for sure that he wasn’t coming back.

He couldn’t get the image out of his head. The man had built a foolproof death helmet that fired nine bullets into his head at once, all at different angles. He really wanted this to work. He was Rick-fucking-Sanchez, everything he did worked. He had always jokingly told Morty about his tentative plans to buy a hat. The joke took on a sinister second meaning after seeing the spectacle in the garage. How long had he been thinking about this?

Before he could take a step closer, he collapsed, throwing up his guts. There were no tears yet. He had time for that later. Right now he had to bury his grandpa.

He grabbed a dirty towel from the hamper to sop up the blood, then used it to wrap around Rick’s shoulders so that Morty didn’t have to touch the body directly. He wrapped his arms underneath his armpits and dragged him through the house to the screen door. He barely registered the screams from the family or the trail of blood on the carpet. He dug a deep grave so that his body wouldn’t wash away in the next storm, which was very close to breaking while he worked. Right as he patted the dirt down over the newly dug hole, fat drops of rain pelted his shirt.

His shoulders shook when he sat back down at the table. The rest of his family sat rooted to the spot, not bothering to move when he carried the corpse through the living room to the sliding glass doors. No one said anything. He stared in front of him, a stare that pierced through the drywall and the brick to see beyond, to see a thousand miles away. If there was a heaven, Rick wouldn’t be in it.

The crying happened later. His mother sobbed hysterically while Jerry hugged her on the couch. Summer cried too, either in her room or in the armchair. The only one who didn’t sob was Morty. He didn’t cry with his body. Tears just continually ran down his cheeks without his consent.

Eventually the Ricks came. Two of them led Morty to the Citadel. Somehow they knew when a Rick died, he didn’t know how and at the time, he didn’t question or care. Again, no one said much of anything, Morty just followed them like it was his job. It was his job to listen to men like his grandpa, after all. That’s what he was born to do, follow people that knew more than him. He vacantly, mindlessly followed them to Morty daycare. He vacantly, mindlessly did as he was told.

One of his escorts showed him a bit of humanity before he left. He squeezed Morty’s shoulder, gave him a sympathetic flat line of a mouth. He did see genuine sympathy in those blue eyes. It was the only time in his life that he ever saw emotion like that, real, human emotion from a Rick. And it was the last time for a long time.

The Ricks who watched them either didn’t have sympathy or didn’t know how to show it. Maybe they were inoculated against the suffering of their underlings. Maybe they had all experienced their own personal tragedies and couldn’t spare any suffering for the kids like him. Regardless, they bullied him, jostled him a little bit when he was slow to move.

Usually, they left them to their own devices. They only came to get them if they needed their shots or if they had been chosen to go back to school. The other Mortys lifted him up, made him feel welcome. Every Morty in Morty daycare had gone through tragedies of their own. Most of their grandpas had been shot, either by the government, by the police, or by their own hands. Some of them were ripped apart by aliens before their partners’ eyes. One of them had watched their grandpa helplessly as he drowned in acid. That Morty had acid burns on his arms, received when he had thrown his arms down to save his grandpa, to no avail. When he pulled his Rick’s body out of the acid pit, he no longer had a lower half. That kid screamed at night. They gave him benzodiazepines twice a day and trazodone at night. It still didn’t stave off the nightmares completely, but it helped.

A-02 received antidepressants himself. He did notice a mood improvement from the drugs and from being around fellow comrades in misery. He was thankful to not be alone.

***

Rick Zeta-03118 was about as popular with his peers as doofus Rick. He was no doofus though. All Ricks except a few tall Mortys and maybe doofus Rick were equally intelligent. And Zeta Rick secretly thought that doofus Rick was just as smart as the rest, he was just nicer by a million light years, which his other peers interpreted as stupidity. He liked doofus Rick despite the negative rumors. He didn’t believe in them and refused to take part in spreading them.

No, Rick Zeta-03118 was unpopular because he had a soft heart. When evil Rick compiled a list of Ricks in order of malice, his heart was located near the top of benevolent Ricks. Maybe doofus Rick, bless him, was kinder, and a few other outcasts beyond that, in the far flung dimensions. Zeta was as kind as a Rick could hope to be. He tried to hide it but he couldn’t make awful, mean-spirited jokes around his comrades, and they knew it and picked on him mercilessly for his “chicken shit attitude.” He was more of a punny guy, truthfully. Puns didn’t hurt anyone.

Zeta Rick had no Morty. His Morty died of a rare cancer precipitated by high exposure to ionizing radiation, and Zeta berated himself every day for not fashioning at least a lightweight lead apron or something for the poor kid. He sat by his bedside and watched him wilt away at fourteen.

While Morty was bedridden, either at home or later, in hospice, they talked about the universe. Morty never got to see most of the things he talked about. At the time, Zeta expounded upon the wonders of the infinite dimensions. He loved seeing Morty’s sparkling eyes as he listened with rapt attention. He was the grandchild every parent dreamed of, one who respected him and hung on every word. Maybe he was too proud, but to be fair, few kids had such cool grandparents.

Morty’s sparkle left his eyes as his condition deteriorated. He spent most of his time unconscious. Still, Zeta kept vigil by his bed and waited for him to wake up enough so that he could talk about the dimension of wizards and witches and dragons. Morty loved those stories most of all. He was a huge fan of dragons and magic. Zeta recounted the story of how the wizards and witches came to accept him as a god with unlimited power because of his gadgets. He told him, over and over, how he single-handedly brought them to the industrial revolution.

Zeta spread his ashes in that magical dimension, the dimension Zeta Morty never got the chance to visit. He stood on the precipice of a canyon and watched the dust fly away in the wind.

That night, for the first time in his life, he drank mead and took comfort in women from the local tavern.

It hurt too much to live on Earth. It held too many painful memories, so he left to take up residence in the Citadel. Unlike most Ricks in the multiverse, he left a note to his daughter explaining his reason for leaving and expressing his love without holding back. But like all Ricks, he was a coward who couldn’t say goodbye to her face, to his family’s faces. So in the dead of night, he flew his ship and landed in the city, in the eternal daylight. He felt at home amongst the stars eternally hanging in the sky. He could point out which star systems lay where, if only someone actually cared enough to listen. He had no Morty, and no Rick would be impressed with his ability to chart the stars or his sentimentality.

However lonely he became, he couldn’t bring himself to take a Morty from Morty daycare. For him, it would be like choosing a sad puppy from amongst sad puppies, except all the sad puppies looked exactly the same and all had equally tragic lives up to that point. Not to mention they were all smart and capable of serving as a partner. How could he choose one out of many if none of them were distinguishable?

He took up drinking to drown his sadness, just like every other Rick. Since the society was created by them and centered around them, liquor stores stayed open twenty-four hours a day, to his dismay and twisted delight.

The Citadel centered around the separation of Ricks and Mortys, he lamented as he poured himself another shot.

***

Rick tried his very best at maintaining the separation of Ricks and Mortys. The boy was getting way too clingy and it freaked him out. Intimacy freaked him out. Hence the failed marriage in his past and the currently failing marriage of his daughter. It ran in the family. It must have missed Morty though because he became way too bold with invading his personal space. After that one incident in which they both got far too blazed, Morty suddenly thought he could get away with touching him whenever he wanted. He should never have let it get that far. He couldn’t tell if he took his retreats as a joke or as playing hard to get, because the boy would not take a damn hint.

Like right now, his grandson’s head rested in his lap, not so subtly pushing his boundaries again. He couldn’t feel the weight of his head because it mostly rested on his metal leg but he knew he was in his space and that was enough. He could feel his breath through his sweater and he did not enjoy it. Or if he did, he refused to admit it.

“Morty, Morty, I -- I gotta get up. Get off of me.” He slid his head off of him. Then the fucker took his place back on his grandfather’s lap, cheekily grinning at him now. He thought this was a joke. Fucker. 

“I’m getting mad. We--we’re not gonna go to the arcade if you keep doing this.” Morty didn’t move. “Li--literally, kid, we--we’re not going anywhere. I literally can’t go anywhere.” He tried to shoo him away. Morty’s grubby hands slapped onto either side of his face. He stared into his eyes, his son’s own eyes wide and open and green. Okay, that was the final straw. This was getting too weird. “Alright, alright, that’s it, I’m leaving.” He got up, and Morty’s head slid to the couch with a thump. He went to his room. He could feel Morty’s eyes still following him as he retreated.

The swivel chair squeaked under his weight as he plopped onto it with a groan. He hid his head in his hands, elbows on the desk. For once, he had no idea how to proceed. He didn’t buy into this love shit; he tried it once, never again.

How do you let someone down gently?

***

“Listen to me, you little shit.” Rick had one hand firmly grasping his shoulder. The other hand propped up Morty’s chin, forcing him to make eye contact.

“Wh--what’s wrong with you? Y--you--you think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

Morty gaped, wide-eyed like a deer mounted to a wall. He had no idea what he was talking about. Of course not.

“I--I don’t do this, this lovey-dovey shit. What--whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.”

He let go of Morty. Whether he fell without the other man bearing down on him was not his problem.

He didn’t fall under his own weight, but realization did finally enter his eyes. “I--I didn’t--.” But he was already gone. He was justifying himself to the air.

***

So Morty had his first heartbreak. How did he ever think it would work? No, he never believed it would work, did he? He just got carried away, thinking that if they couldn’t be, well, abnormal, then they could at least be normal together. Normal, touchy-feely family. Even Rick had limits, maybe even morals, and he had crossed them. He certainly had a large personal bubble that he pushed too far into.

He started doodling ideas for posters again. This time he drew really angry, ugly Ricks that bullied poor Mortys like him. Again, ham it up for those future subscribers to his magazine. Maybe he could design a T-shirt.

***

This wasn’t the first heart he ever broke. He used to do it all the time. Even into his old age, he crushed hopes with an iron, unfeeling fist, and he did it with glee. But this wasn’t so fun. It just felt weird and wrong. It felt like he had to admit that maybe he actually cared, maybe a little too much. He successfully stuffed the feelings away most of the time, all thanks to mind-altering substances. But recently he had spent a lot of time sober.

Unless he really miscalculated, Morty loved him in the wrong ways, and he had to stop it right there for both of their sakes.

Rick had no planetary scruples, but he had a weakness when it came to protecting family. And Morty was the only family he had now. He had abandoned the rest months and months ago to save himself from the government. 

Rick couldn’t bear the cognitive dissonance of caring, at least on the surface, and wanting to fuck his grandson at the same time. It was just sick, but the thought returned to him again and again. He swore he’d reasoned out of this before, ever since Morty went to college. So why bother thinking about it? Morty’s recent clinginess exacerbated it. He thought again about that helmet and his tentative plans to make the last hat he would ever wear.


	15. Dream about Me

“Hello, Morty,” the clothing store Morty said when he saw Morty approach.

“Ho--how’s the donations?”

“It’s going great! I have to empty the jar every day.” He gave his smiles so willingly. He must lead a fulfilling life, he thought with a pang.

“How much is there?”

“Oh, I’d say about three hundred now.”

“Geez, that’s--that’s really good.”

“We should come up with a name. It might get a few more donations.”

“Yeah, uh, I’ve been thinking about it, but I’ve been too ... busy to come up with anything good.” Too busy moping over the fact that his blood relative wouldn’t fuck him. It sounded ridiculous in his mind.

“Well, that’s okay! I have some ideas.”

They settled on SAM: The Society for the Advancement of Mortys.

“That sounds go--great.” Morty really thought so too. He admired clothing store Morty’s idea.

“Well, you know how it is. I just sit on this stool and wait for people to come in, so I have time to think about things. I’m sure you have a Rick at home, don’t you?”

“Y--yeah.” He rubbed his hand through his hair, bashful for some reason over the fact. He thought irrationally that other people could smell the oxytocin shot to the nose that he must have taken in order to fall head-over-heels in love with his Rick. He never thought to consider the fact that others in the infinite multiverse have probably done so before him and will continue to do so after him.

“That will keep you busy. Truthfully....” The clothing store Morty made sure no one else was in the store when he said, “I don’t envy you. My life is much more peaceful now without anyone else in it.”

“I bet.”

“Ricks don’t like to admit it, but Mortys can live just fine without them. We just need to help the ones that are down on their luck.”

“I agree.” He didn’t think he had what it took to live “just fine” without a grandfather, which made him respect the other Morty more. He liked the idea of independence. It would sure make his life simpler.

***

If Morty wasn’t around, it would sure make Rick’s life simpler. He lived for the ideal of independence. He could feel himself slipping into a depressive episode. He lived by the drink and he slept by the TV and he watched Morty doodling whatever it was he worked on. Everything was fine, he couldn’t let himself screw it up by bringing emotions into this. Regardless, depression never listened to logic. He felt himself sinking, head swimming and fluorescent bulbs buzzing, and he just focused on Morty’s right hand as he colored logos for some business venture.

“H--hey, R--Rick?” Morty stopped coloring and looked at him with worry.

“Hm?” He could feel his eyes closing against his will.

“You don’t look so good.”

“Thanks.” He slumped over the armrest. He was out.

***

He dreamed, for the first time in months, about Morty and him. They were pressed together in a dark closet, chest to chest and limbs crumpled together, and they were falling, somehow they were doing both at once, like being stuck in a falling elevator, but he could feel air whooshing over him. He woke up with a jerk when they hit the bottom; Morty had gone to his room.

***

Morty had similarly confusing dreams that were more sensation than vision. Mostly the feeling of cold metal on his skin and hands wringing his neck. He always woke up when the last breath of air squeezed out of his lungs. Sweat stuck his clothes to his body.

He tiptoed into the other bedroom. He felt alone. For once, Rick didn’t fall asleep on the couch, but he had somehow made it to bed like a well-adjusted human being. Morty, feeling brave, sat on the edge of the bed. The springs squeaked under him. Rick shot up and reached reflexively for something under his pillow. He stopped searching when he recognized his grandson. He probably kept a gun under his pillow like a smart outlaw. Thank goodness he recognized him quickly. Fugitives tended to make snap decisions when awoken.

“Wh--what--what are you doing in my room, Morty?”

“I had a bad dream.”

“So? You’re an adult. My whole life’s been a -- been a bad dream. You don’t see me sn--sneaking into your room.”

“S--sorry.”

“You need to be, what, bottle-fed? What time is it?”

“No. And I don’t know.” He regretted coming in here.

He picked up his watch and squinted at the face. “Two AM. You woke me up at two AM. For a bad dream.”

Morty nodded meekly. He didn’t deny it, though it sounded silly when he said it out loud.

“And you want me to...? What, Morty? What, do you want me to cuddle you?”

Why not? “...Maybe.”

“Seriously?” he said incredulously. It was far too late for this, he was too old for this shit. “Ugh. Get out. Get out of my room.” He pointed to the door.

Instead of moving, Morty stayed put. “No.”

“You’re being a baby. Go to bed.” He turned over in bed. End of discussion.

“I--I am in bed.” He felt like a child but his dignity must have gotten lost in the dark. Rick didn’t answer. Morty got comfortable next to him, even though he (rightfully) hogged all the blankets. He didn’t move to push him out, but he knew he didn’t sleep well, especially not with some wiggly teenager next to him. Usually Morty didn’t act so petty, but he turned over and slung an arm over his grandpa just to piss him off. Since the other was king of pettiness and refused to acknowledge Morty, he ignored it.

Somehow they had fallen asleep in that position. Morty’s cheek was pressed into his back, rubbed raw from the rough cotton tank. He was the big spoon and he could feel the vertebrae of his bony partner through the fabric of their clothes. For some ungodly reason, he decided it would be a good idea to get under his top and dance his fingers up his front. This caused the man to jerk and flip over in a panic, knocking Morty to the floor. 

“Jesus Christ, Morty, what the hell were you trying to do?!”

“N--nothing, I was--I was half asleep. S--sorry.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He was half telling the truth. The other half he didn’t mention was that he couldn’t resist the urge. He thrilled at the stolen intimacy, the only kind he would probably ever get.

“I’m not your girlfriend. Don’t touch me. Not like that. Ever.” He flipped over so he didn’t have to look at him. If he looked at him, he would tell him to get back in bed. He hadn’t slept so well in weeks. Instead, he stubbornly faced the wall and perked his ears to listen for Morty’s exit. He wouldn’t get up to show Morty the flush that crept up his neck. They’d seen each other naked, but for some reason showing that signal of biological vulnerability seemed too intimate to share.

***

They had a tacit agreement to share the bed whenever Morty had a bad dream. Rick pretended to dislike it and Morty pretended that he had bad dreams. Sure, he had a few, but maybe once a week or once a month. And never when he slept with Rick. It was all a delicate set-up to preserve their dignity and Rick was mostly smart enough to not mess with it.

They both slept better together, though they never admitted it. It was all part of the balance they struck between caving to biological desires for closeness and maintaining the veneer of a platonic relationship.

It was getting unhealthy. They slept together every night. They made up for it by arguing all day. Even when they were being shot at.

The sound of gunshots echoed in the building, so they couldn’t pinpoint the location of the shooters very well. They both agreed that it was too close for comfort. But that was where their agreement ended. Bullets chipped and ricocheted off the walls as they hissed at each other from either side of the doorway they hid behind.

“What -- what do you mean we’re doing this for no reason?!” Morty’s heart pounded. Another near death experience to notch on his belt. Really. He had notches on his belt dedicated to the number of times he pulled out of a situation with his life between his teeth. He didn’t bother keeping an exact number in his head anymore, just added tallies to the torn up piece of leather that wound around the waist of his jeans.

“I told you, Morty, we’re doing this for the sheer sexual thrill.”

“The what? What if we died? Don’t you ever think about that, huh?”

“Nope. I just do, Morty, that’s the--.” He poked the barrel of his gun far enough out in the open to return fire and then retreated behind the safety of the wall. “And that’s the difference between you and me. You think too much, and I don’t -- wait, no, I still think more and faster than you do.”

“Just get us home.” A bullet whizzed by them. “Please.”

They stepped through the portal just as some six-legged creatures galloped through the doorway, guns ablaze.

The adrenaline and the anger made him breathe hard even though they were no longer in danger. “G--geez, Rick, I thought you -- I thought you d--did everything for a reason.”

“I did have a reason, that’s where you’re wrong. Th--they pissed me off awhile back and I got back at them.”

“Y--you’re like some kind of fucked up demon, y--you just d--do whatever just to cause chaos.”

“Did you see their faces when I portaled those tentacle monsters into the main room?” He smiled, clearly proud of himself for that one. A real classic.

Morty wasn’t proud. At least he wouldn’t admit to being amused by it, even if the teenaged boy in him loved seeing tentacles writhing around and crushing furniture. He could do without the tentacles smearing people across the walls, but it came with the territory.

“I--I hate you. You--you put your own -- your own grandson in danger j--just to get back at some stupid aliens for -- for a whatever, I don’t even care, you know? What if I had actually died, Rick?”

“You--you never asked these questions before. What, did you take a--a philosophy class in college? Suddenly aware of your mortality, huh?”

“No, I’m just -- I’m finally standing up to you.”

“Are you gonna stand up tonight, hmm, or are you gonna fondle my dick like you do every other night when you think I’m asleep?” He had his hands on his hips. It made him look childish, which he guessed was appropriate.

“What? I don’t --.” Morty’s face heated up. “What?”

“Then why are you so red?” His grin turned a little more ... lecherous. He lusted after Morty’s weak spots. Whenever he found one, he nipped at it a little bit at a time until Morty was senselessly furious or embarrassed to the point of choked silence.

“I don’t --.” He stared at his hands. “Do I?”

“Do you, Morty? They’re -- it’s your therapy session. You answer me.” He had the upper hand and he yanked Morty around like a puppet master. Like always.

“No, no, I don’t -- I mean, I don’t, right?” Now he was uncertain and that was the worst part. What if he did it in his sleep?

“Well, now wait a minute, why do you let me do it?” He thought he turned the tables because, for a second, they both stilled, and they stood in silence. Not even a breath. But then his grandfather’s face resumed its mocking expression. 

“No, I don’t let you do it. I keep pushing your hands away but you -- but you keep going for it. It’s all night with you.”

Morty didn’t know if he told the truth or not. Sometimes he did and sometimes he lied just to hurt him.

“You must really want it.” He waggled his eyebrows.

Morty sprung, tackling the walking corpse to the floor and knocking the breath out of him. He took advantage of the one second that it took for him to regain his composure to sock him in the jaw.

“I hate you! You--you--!” He almost punched him again, but Rick’s hand caught his fist mid-strike. The loss of control had tears welling in his eyes. He struggled for a minute, and they rolled around on the floor. In the process Rick’s foot knocked the cable box off the table. He heard the plastic box thump to the floor. Like a referee’s whistle, it stopped them both for a second.

Rick was on top, like always. They could have pulled apart, they could have ended it, but then he said, “You like it when I’m on top, don’t you?”

Rick was too quick for his fist to make contact with the other cheek. He held the balled fist in his hand and this time didn’t let go.

Morty said through clenched teeth, “Let. Go. Of. Me.”

“I’m not gonna let you punch me again,” he said, low and husky. Despite his anger, that voice that he had never heard before traveled south. They both breathed hard and didn’t move. The strike that landed on his grandfather’s jaw already started to swell and bruise. This hit all of Morty’s kinks.... He better get him off before he realized this new development.

He had let go of the fist and his hands were pressed to his chest, keeping him from sitting up. The rest of him sat on his upper thighs to keep him from kicking. This all felt like it came right out of Morty’s weirdest dreams. It felt a little too sexual to be real.

Rick leaned forward, breathing into Morty’s ear. In the same low voice, he said, “You like this, don’t you, you sick fuck?” Morty’s eyes went wide and he struggled anew. Oh, he knew. He knew and he was now using it to his advantage. The master manipulator knew everything.

Gravity pulled tears from his eyes to the sides of his face and down to the floor. “Please. Let go of me.” He felt so small. His body betrayed him and his legs itched to carry him away from here.

“If you promise not to punch me, Morty.” He moved just a little bit and that felt the wrong kind of good. His breath hitched. God dammit. He hoped that his moving that way was unintentional. He didn’t know what he hoped for. Just that he would be freed and that he could breathe unhindered by those strong hands pressed to his ribs.

The weight lifted off him and he sat up. The thick denim hid the worst of his shame. Rick sat cross-legged on the floor, staring Morty up and down. The eyes were too hot, they were staring at him through the lens of a microscope, and that microscope was magnifying the rays of the sun. Every pore of his was plundered by one singular gaze. He saw everything: the flushed face, the reddened eyes and the pathetic crying, the wet spot on his jeans.

They both looked like shit. Rick had a flowering bruise on the side of his face, and both of them were smeared with tentacle juice and dirt. Their hair stood up wilder than usual.

“Well, I’m going to my room.” On his way, he pressed an ice pack from the freezer to his swollen face.

***

It was night according to the clock. The artificial light that filtered through the windows never changed, so he had to go by his phone. He stood at the threshold of the other bedroom. No noise, but the blue light from the lamp shined out from under the door. He opened the door slowly, letting it creak to alert the man on the other side. He didn’t bother looking away from his computer screen with anything more than a quick flick of the eyes. He still held the ice pack to his jaw. He had a peacock’s display of color at this point.

“D--do I really ... t--touch you at night?”

He said after a pause, “Morty.” He said nothing else.

“Do I?”

He didn’t answer.

Morty decided not to sleep next to him at night.

***

“Oh, Morty, did your Rick do this to you?” His face was so expressive. They had the same face, the same everything, but he communicated so much better through nonverbal cues and facial expressions than he himself believed he did.

“D--do wh--what?” He looked in the mirror before he left, and he did so again with the full length mirror propped up against one of the pillars. He had no noticeable bruises or scratches.

“You just look tired. Are you sleeping okay?”

“No, I guess not, not really.” He quickly added, “But it’s not his fault. It’s--it’s me. Just can’t sleep, heh.”

He didn’t buy it, but he let it go. He cheered up as he talked about how well their new name worked out for increasing donations. 

“The Morty customers just eat it up. They all want to know more. You better start working on where to send the money. It’s piling up and I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep it all in the store anymore.” He pointedly made sure no one listened to him talk about a physical stockpile of money in his store. Ricks were dicks, after all.

***

He hit the jackpot. His dreams were frightening and sexual, and he nearly always woke up with a confused boner and a sheen of sweat. It was beyond just the sensation of being fucked senseless, and the feeling that it’s wrong, but you want it, no. Now it had the element of real danger in it. The aggressor maybe would have his hand and its bony fingers around his neck. He controlled when he could breathe. He woke up gasping for air those times, when his assailant pushed him a little too far into reality. In one dream the metal barrel of a sawed-off shotgun pressed into his temple, and he refused to do something, something demeaning, he knew, and bam. He felt the blood burst from his head at the explosion which propelled him into the waking world. In bed, blood ran from his nose onto the sheets.

Usually though, it was more concrete. It was his grandfather and him fighting, and the fight devolved into brutal hate sex, somewhere between a physical altercation and a consumption of each other.

Actually, those last dreams were the worst. They felt too real. They got too close to actually happening for Morty’s comfort. At least he could pretend that the assailant whose face he never saw in his other, vaguer dreams wasn’t related to him by blood. And at least in those cases, he didn’t see the subject of those dreams eating breakfast three feet across from him every morning.

It was a sign of a frustration that sank into the subconscious because Morty refused to give it time in the daylight to work itself out. Since it didn’t see the light of day, it bubbled out in unexpected and inappropriate situations. This made matters tense around the house.

***

Rick was a master of suppression. Instead of nightmares every night, he drank himself unconscious instead: deep, dreamless oblivion. He saved the nightmares for when he awoke. Seeing Morty after that altercation, catching sight of his bruised face in the mirror, and experiencing the hangovers of a lifetime, that was nightmare enough.

So something had, since their last brawl, crawled up Morty’s ass and died, he concluded after dealing with his poutiness for exactly .02 seconds. That really bummed him out. Adventures weren’t fun when you lugged around a pouty teenager. A heavy, pouty teenager with a gun that pointed at him just as often as it pointed to their actual enemies. This made matters tense around the house.

It came to a head one afternoon as they put on their ammunition belts. Rick had even gotten into the spirit of things by tying his hair back with a red bandana. Had to keep that hair from getting singed off, you know. For the ladies.

He mentioned offhandedly that he wore the bandana to protect his hair as a precaution for when he went muff diving that evening, and instead of laughing, even laughing politely, Morty got all bent out of shape about it. He had cut off the last dangling thread of Rick’s patience by acting like a princess, and now he prepared to throw down. He flung the ammo belt off him and undid the bandana. 

“F--fine, okay, okay, maybe the bandana is stupid. See? I took it off. And--and I went ahead and took off the belt for now because it’s heavy and I have a feeling you’re gonna keep us all day with your petty, girly shit.”

Morty glared at him even harder. He slipped out of his ammo belt as well, likewise preparing for an argument.

“What -- listen, let me just ask -- what the hell crawled up your ass and died, Morty? Yo--you’ve been acting like a little bitch ever since, well, ever since you gave me this.” He pointed at his bruise.

“Do you not want to hang out anymore? Because I got bad news for you, Morty, we live together. S--so stop being a pussy and man up to your feelings so we can get back to normal. Okay?”

“What--what feelings?”

“Wha, you told me yourself weeks ago that you liked me and wanted a -- a d--different kind of relationship. And I told you that it’s not gonna happen. Somethin’ you don’t understand about that? Need me to explain it again?”

“N--no.” His eyes were lowered, but his cheeks blazed. When he said that out loud, it sealed the deal. Any stubborn, weird hopes inside him that originated from their times spent in physical contact needed to be purged. “I just -- I just don’t understand wh--why y--you haven’t replaced me w--with another Morty. If--if I suck so much.”

“I--is that what you think this is about? You think b--because you have feelings that I’m going to trade you in like a, like a used car deal or something?”

He bent down on one knee so he could catch Morty’s downcast eyes. One hand gripped Morty’s side for balance. “Listen, I--I don’t know if you know this, but you’re a human being, Morty, whether you like it or not. And--and whether you like it or not, y--you can’t drink away your feelings. Trust me, I’ve been trying for sixty years. Th--they’re there no matter what, Morty, and you just have to accept that. You got some kind of baggage that’s making it real hard for Grandpa to stand being around you. S--so spit it out.” He remained kneeling, searching his still downcast eyes for the answer.

“I--I told you, I’m--after that argument, I thought you might -- thought you would give me away, get another Morty. One who’s not so s--s--screwed up.”

“Do you -- you really think that little of me, huh? I told you, Morty, the voucher’s for emergencies only. An -- an emergency means you died and--and I need a new partner, not ‘Oh, my Morty’s weird, he’s exploring his sexuality like every other twenty year old, better get another one.’ You get that? All Mortys are weird, numbnuts, trading you in wouldn’t do shit. 

“And besides--.” He really made sure Morty was looking at him, paying his full attention. “Besides, you’re my Morty from my dimension, D-013. That’s--that’s special, that’s a special bond there.” He actually saw the beginnings of a smile. He did good.

“S--so please, in the hopes that I n--never have to be nice to you again, I’d like to get back to the shooting range.”

Morty paused, smile still quirking his lips upward despite his best efforts to tame them. “Deal.”

***

Morty felt much lighter after that heart to heart. For one, it proved that Rick still had a heart with which he could have a heart to heart. Second, like a piece of duct tape to the skin, just ripping the whole piece off at once hurt like a bitch, but at least it was out there and over with all at once. It wasn’t just stuck in his subconscious to fester. Whatever had happened between them did happen, but it didn’t permanently jeopardize their friendship. He at least could feel secure that he wouldn’t be traded for a superior Morty.

As for suppressing his desires, he didn’t make him feel guilty for them, which was a huge relief. They were just feelings. They wouldn’t go away with alcohol, weed, arcades, or adventures, but they didn’t have to ruin a very special bond. He cherished the platonic time they did spend together, shooting at aliens, flirting with them, stealing from them, and otherwise wreaking havoc across the galaxies.

***

Rick surprised himself with the level of eloquence and understanding he had shown Morty. He must have had some latent desire for family harmony that surfaced when he saw Morty fracturing. Especially since he searched in his heart and realized that he wouldn’t trade his Morty for another one, even though he certainly could have for any reason. Even if his Morty liked him a little too much, he was still his and no one else’s. Why bother changing what worked?

Besides, the idea that his kid clung to him so fiercely stroked his ego. As far as his own human emotions about him, he refused to delve beyond the platonic, though under the surface, he always kept under wraps the idea that he could, at any time, cash in on his willing participant. But relinquishing that control, opening himself up to vulnerability, that scared him. Therefore, fear was another human emotion he kept under wraps. It served no purpose. And qualms? He had none ... except where Morty was concerned. Then, much to his chagrin, he recognized himself as the doting grandparent who wanted to shield Morty from the worst of his own perversions. With any other being in the infinite universe, he would have already taken what he wanted. Only for his grandson’s sake did he hold back. Any pain that that caused him was kept under wraps with the rest of his human emotions. As the genius of the group, he had to keep control, couldn’t let himself succumb to that desire that he kept so closely guarded.

He had gotten very good at redirecting those inappropriate daydreams, those desires of the idle mind. When he had cut out the Mortys for hire so long ago, he had mastered the desires of the flesh and saved some money to boot. Since he and Morty no longer slept in the same bed, there was no more temptation at home. Now if he could keep it all together for his grandson, his secret source of joy, his only family, forever, it would be fine. He hoped to an alien God that he had the strength to resist lust for the rest of eternity. He prayed to that alien being that Morty would grow out of his infatuation and leave Rick alone.


	16. Ignore the Red Flags

Rick and Morty independently came to the conclusion that their relationship should remain familial and platonic. Each believed that they acted in the best interests of the other: Morty because he believed Rick truly had no romantic interest in him, and Rick because he believed that a more intimate relationship would, if not at the time, eventually traumatize Morty irrevocably. It should be easy.

But that didn’t mean that, despite their better judgments, Rick and Morty didn’t test the functional limits of their platonic relationship at many points in their day-to-day lives. They just needed to see where the walls of their boundaries needed reinforcing, of course.

***

They came back from the shooting range. They had tried out some new weapons whose targeting systems automatically sought the hub of the central nervous system in biological targets. In other words, the bullets aimed themselves towards the brain or equivalent cluster of cells for quick dispatches.

Since Rick had seniority, Morty had to wait for him to get out of the shower first before he took his turn. The water seemed to run interminably. Morty idly wondered if he would ever have hot water again or if he had used the Citadel’s entire supply in one go.

Finally, blessedly, the water stopped. Rick came out in nothing but a towel. A towel on a man that tall didn’t cover much. Morty saw quite a bit of hairy old man leg. He also made sure to stare, before he was forced to look away, at the damp, sinewy muscles on the top half of his body that made themselves apparent any time he moved. He had his head cocked to the side, staring back with a quizzical, slightly amused, expression. He could see how the corners of his mouth turned just a little upwards. Morty averted his gaze quickly. He had been caught full on staring at his old man’s half naked body.

“Like what you see?” His eyebrows danced seductively, and he had his tongue just barely sticking out between his teeth. Oh geez. This man knew how to play to his strengths. Morty couldn’t control the biological response to embarrassment and maybe a little something else: the red creep up his neck and onto his face.

“L--leave me alone, R--Rick.” He played it cool despite the creeping warmth of his upper body.

“Alright, take a shower. There’s still hot water.” He jerked his thumb toward the bathroom, which indicated to Morty to get up and stop hogging the whole couch.

Morty undressed and kicked the bloody, brain-splattered clothes toward the dirty clothes hamper that stood in the corner of the bathroom. The hot water soothed his aching muscles. Those guns with their smart target-lock systems were very heavy. He watched the waterfall of old brown blood wash off his body and down the drain.

His shower didn’t last nearly as long as the other man’s. He tried not to think about what someone could do in the shower that would take up that much time. He came out with the towel wrapped around his waist to find that Rick hadn’t changed, just stretched luxuriantly to take up the entire length of the couch, with the towel just barely covering the important parts.

“Y--you should, uh, p--put on some clothes. I mean, if you want--.”

“Why? Are we going somewhere?”

“N--no, just--.”

“A man’s house is his castle, MOAGhrty. Can’t a man be naked in his castle?” He stretched out his arms when he said that to encompass the entirety of the apartment. “Unless there’s something about me naked that _bothers_ you.” He drew out the word _bothers_ with a mocking lilt, as if the idea that some old fuck’s wrinkled up body would disconcert a discerning man like Morty was the absurdest thing ever. He had to admit that it was indeed pretty absurd. Regardless, his eyes continuously flicked between the infomercials and the one part of Rick that remained covered. Rick, the smartest man in the universe, missed none of this exchange.

He stretched out his leg a little more, opening himself wider. The towel had long ago reached the very limit of its ability to provide decent coverage for Rick’s lanky body. He made a show of really stretching out his body. The sound of cracking joints accompanied it.

Morty blushed furiously out of embarrassment and shame at his own susceptibility. He did this on purpose, picking on his weaknesses. He was a homing missile who used his victim’s deepest, darkest secrets as fuel for his attacks. If nothing else, Rick experienced the very human emotion of sadistic pleasure.

“Why don’t you, uh, why don’t you sit next to Grandpa, eh?” He pushed himself into a sitting position, the towel curled obediently across his lap. He patted the cushion next to him.

Morty obliged and slid next to him, making sure his own towel prevented his naked leg from touching the metal leg of his grandfather.

They watched TV together. Despite their show of getting comfortable, neither of them relaxed for a moment their surreptitious monitoring of the other person.

Morty, like a lustful teenager or like a scientist who must observe all the relevant information, soaked up the sight of his grandfather half naked and slouched over the armrest. It was another moment of stolen intimacy that he held to his heart. He could count the ribs that climbed up his side. He saw for the first time since he had built the thing where the metal leg anchored itself into the muscles of his hip. The limb was a masterpiece, something they created together. Morty’s pride stirred at the realization that he had helped his grandfather build something useful, something he depended on. He also noticed the gray happy trail that ended underneath the towel, though he tried not to think too hard about where that led. When he finished cataloging the disparate parts of his person, he realized with a start that again, his staring had been intercepted.

Rick had his blue eyes trained on him. Morty had no idea how long he had been looking, or at what point Rick realized he was being stared at again.

“You, uh, Morty .... I hope you don’t stare at girls like that. It--it’s, uh, r--really cr--creepy. Knock it off.”

“Heh. S--sorry, R--Rick.” He ran his hands through his wet hair.

“’S okay. Not like I’m gonna trade you in over an eyeful.”

Morty breathed out a sigh of relief. He liked the reassurance that, while he may be weird, at least he wasn’t in danger of being ejected from his grandpa’s side. But he better not be so obvious next time.

***

Rick tried his very best to protect Morty from being the target of his perversion, but he could never pass up the opportunity for some inappropriate physical humor at Morty’s expense. Rick thrilled and also balked at the knowledge that he completely enthralled Morty just by being himself. He would be easier to seduce than a Catholic schoolgirl, if he wanted to. Which he didn’t want to, he reminded himself.

Morty, on the other hand, wanted to see the tables turned. Morty wanted power in the interaction. He wanted to see Rick without self-control, staring lustfully, hands twitching by his sides, begging with his eyes. They didn’t have to be romantically involved. Just knowing if he had the ability to trip Rick up if he wanted to would be enough.

***

Morty brazenly invaded Rick’s bedroom. Almost to antagonize him, he slept in his bed before he had the chance to come in, meaning he would either have to wake him, take the couch, or sleep next to him. He breathed in the smell of his grandfather’s sheets. Alcohol, aftershave, soap, and something decidedly unique to Rick. Something old, something masculine.

Rick actually slept in Morty’s bed, since Morty had stolen his. The smell of his grandson blanketed his nose. He smelled like a college kid, which meant that he smelled like hormones and sweat mixed with the smell of the bath soap they used. The sharp tang wiggled two fat fingers deep into his nostrils. Women smelled a lot better, but something dark inside of Rick growled appreciatively at the masculine, animal muskiness of his son’s bed. He tried not to think too hard about his reaction to his own grandson.

They wordlessly confronted each other in the morning with matching suspicious squints over breakfast, but it didn’t stop Morty from trying that trick again the next night, with the same results.

***

“You look more rested.”

“Oh, th--thanks. I, um, still don’t kn--know where the money should go.”

“Have you thought about sponsoring a Morty from daycare?”

“That -- that might be a good idea. But what does that mean again?”

“We have enough money. Pick one of them and help him start a business. Or be a mentor.”

“Oh, I don’t -- I don’t know.”

“Maybe visit the place and teach them something fun. I mean, if the Ricks don’t care.”

“Err, maybe....”

“I would do it myself, but I’d have to hire someone to watch the place.”

“What do you think?”

“Maybe I’m biased, but truthfully, I’d teach them how to crochet.”

“Crochet?”

“That’s what I do in my spare time.”

“That’s ... interesting, heh.”

“Yeah. I had a Rick once, so you know, I didn’t have much time for myself. But now I can knit and crochet while no one’s in the store. I do a lot of fun things in my spare time.”

“Is crocheting actually fun?”

“It’s relaxing.”

“I don’t know if I’d want to teach them that. Maybe they should learn something, I don’t know, useful?” Morty realized he had put his foot in his mouth when business Morty frowned. “I--I didn’t -- I didn’t mean it like that! I meant, something like a skill.”

“Oh, that is a good idea.”

“I, well, in college I learned how to draft. Like technical drawing. Blueprints and stuff. That’s useful, isn’t it?”

“Sure it is.”

“Yeah, yeah, I could, like, bring graph paper and rulers and make them invent something and draw it on paper.”

“Hmm. Now that’s an idea.”

Morty bought some graph paper and pencils with a small amount of donation money before returning home.

***

“When did you learn to do that?” Rick leaned over his shoulder to watch him draw the schematics for a robot that could spit fire.

“Oh, uh, well, you -- you learn a lot in college.” Morty felt suddenly bashful under his grandpa’s stare.

“Hmm.”

***

Rick was really glad he made those brain wave scramblers as early as he did. He must have lost track of his Morty years ago if he had become a skilled draftsman without his knowledge. And he saw the drawing. It was actually a practical design for a fire-breathing robot, and he couldn’t fault him for any deviations from convention, as there were none. It was passable. He officially knew what he was doing and it scared Rick. An engineering Morty deserved a little respect; it was unusual. It was also dangerous. He had underestimated the danger he and Morty were in. His Morty waves no longer shielded the easily recognizable genius waves. They created constructive interference that amplified the waves and made them easier to pinpoint.

They should be safe as long as they stayed in the Citadel. The Citadel had its own shielding, and the surplus of normal Mortys compared to the geniuses strengthened their security. It should be enough.

When he fully realized that his grandson was no longer a complete idiot, it took him by surprise. Somehow it had never occurred to him before to treat him as anything less than a brainless but maybe sometimes lovable sidekick, because for all intents and purposes, he was. Or at least he thought he was. Now he added disparate pieces of Morty’s life together and saw the picture it created.

What boy didn’t love to play with robots? Morty loved chasing the little metal contraptions around. But how many of those boys caught them and ripped them mercilessly apart to study their insides? Morty, without fail, tried to destroy every invention of his. He chalked it up to young destructiveness, but it was really the beginning of an interest in the way things came apart, how they functioned. The mark of a scientist.

He got a little dull with puberty. The usual fleeting love interests with any girl who breathed kept his attention for years, and his school performance reflected that. Not that he put much merit on grades. He did terrible in school himself. But he believed Morty wasn’t capable of doing well in school, whereas he just didn’t care. His parents talked about how to deal with it over the dinner table all the time in between their arguments about whose fault it was that Morty had the learning disability in the first place. He knew it was Jerry’s blood that tainted the kids’ brains. He refused to take credit for anything stupid Morty did. That all came from his dad.

Then the sucker went to college and majored in chemistry, of all things. At least he didn’t study something stupid like sports psychology. And he did well in it. A prickle of unease had made him cut their adventures off so that he could focus on being his own, semi-intelligent being. It was the least he could do. A smart Morty was an uncontrollable Morty, a partner and not a sidekick.

His resultant depression had nothing to do with the fact that he faced the reality of crawling the universe alone, he swore to himself.

He didn’t have the willpower or the alcohol to keep that up for long, especially when the government chased him and he had to peace out of that dimension entirely. He at least had to take Morty with him, despite the fact that he left everything else without remorse. Maybe out of habit he had to have the warm body next to him to argue with.

Attempting to build a working prosthetic made him more uneasy. He pretended he was upset with the fact that he drank most of his beer. He had to admit that the basic design was sound. No, the upset came with the incontrovertible proof that Morty was innovative enough to come up with the idea himself and to begin executing it without his help.

He knew then that the government had found him because Morty amplified his brain waves, and that meant he had a partner with a brain.

He had taken his advice to stick with science, and with that came some reluctant respect.

Well, he didn’t deserve that much respect. He had some fucked up sexual hang ups that involved him. It was a completely Morty thing to want to admit to such a thing.

So in conclusion, he still wasn’t as smart as Rick, who knew to keep fucked up shit like that to himself.


	17. A Lonely Night

Rick Zeta-03118 knew that Earth was invisible from his location in the universe, but that didn’t stop him from staring in its approximate direction as he swirled a glass of wine in his hand. He leaned over the railing of the porch. Cars zipped to unknown destinations below him, the roads so small from his vantage point on the twentieth floor of a high rise apartment building.

He really needed something better to do than long for the home he couldn’t bear to return to. 

In a rare moment of impulsivity, he shotgunned the last of the wine and let go of the glass. He watched it fall to the sidewalk and shatter with a faint clink. He felt a little bad for doing that. Someone might step on the shards. Maybe he should jump after it. He almost didn’t care that some poor soul would have to sweep up his splattered remains.

He had no close friends besides Doofus, and Doofus was busy following the Rick retinue to the ends of the multiverse in search of criminals. Doofus was the only one who appreciated his puns. He wondered why they bothered bringing him, because they didn’t need him. Comic relief?

He needed a job, or a hobby, or some more friends.

***

Two Ricks had each of Morty A-02’s forearms. His shoes dragged along the ground, leaving twin tracks of dirt behind. They originally had a hand on each shoulder to lead him but they changed tactics when Morty turned his head and bit one of the gloved hands. Now they yanked at his arms to get him to follow. He felt like his elbows would pop out of place from the rough treatment.

He had no idea what happened to Mortys that attacked a Rick. He heard whispers that they were executed, because they never came back.

One side of him thought good riddance to this rundown purgatory. The other side thought that he better figure a way out of this.

The usual Rick had the day off. The Rick in charge of the Mortys that day had yellowish eyes and very pale skin that highlighted the purple shadows of his eye sockets. Snowflakes had more color than this man. His fingers shook when he surreptitiously brought the flask to his mouth. A-02 took pity on him because he clearly felt unwell ... until he opened his mouth.

This man spit venom from his hypodermic teeth. He hated everyone and everything and made his hatred abundantly clear. Morty knew the feeling, so he didn’t say anything at first. He knew that some Ricks were far more unpleasant than others, and that oftentimes Ricks who were serving sentences of community service filled in for the usual babysitters, which was what they were, in essence, in the school/orphanage. Offhandedly yet with precision, Rick made a comment to yank his chain:

“I’ve been thinking, it’s funny how dimension A has the most suicides. I wonder if it has something to do with the Mortys?” He raised his eyebrow. An invitation to argue the point.

He didn’t have time to back up before Morty jumped him. They hit the ground together and Morty had him by the hair, crushing his face into the hard floor. Blood poured from his nose and smeared across the ground. He was too weak to push him off, but at that moment a Rick had passed by the room and called for reinforcements. Four of them surrounded the pair in moments.

It took two of them to pull Morty off the other Rick. The other two reinforcements helped sick Rick to his feet. They stuck Morty with a needle, presumably a tranquilizer to make him easier to deal with. He fought against the welling slack that traveled through his muscles.

Now it seemed like they headed toward the clinic. Morty’s struggling became weaker as the tranquilizer took full effect. He didn’t stop asking, with rising desperation, where they went and what they planned to do, but they didn’t bother to answer.

It was the clinic they headed to after all. The clinic was far too big to be called just a clinic, it was more like a small hospital. He had no idea what they did in there, he had only been inside a few times to get his shots. It definitely lived up to its dystopian reputation. It filled him with the fear and the certainty of fate that animals felt when they walked toward the slaughterhouse.

They were outside but fast approaching the double doors. If he made it inside, he was lost. Summoning one last burst of strength from out of his lax body, he twisted out of the stronghold and kicked one of the Ricks in the stomach. He shoved the other Rick bodily out of the way and made a run for it.

The grounds had no fences. Where would a runaway Morty go? Technically they wanted to keep up the appearance of freedom even though they had none. They stayed put because they had no other options besides the welcoming arms of the streets, and they wanted to be matched with a Rick so they could avoid the fate of the lost Mortys in Mortytown.

He slowed his legs to a walk and stepped into a convenience store a few blocks down. Among the refrigerators of drinks, he recaptured his lost breath. He was free.

***

Rick was drunk as shit. Morty gulped as he slapped a hand on his shoulder in a paternal gesture that devolved into his leaning on him heavily. His breath smelled like straight ethanol and it singed Morty’s eyebrows.

“MOArty, Morty, I--.” He leaned so far into Morty that they both almost fell. When he was this far gone, he became unpredictable.

“I -- I underestimated you.”

“What?”

“I’m, I’m sorry, Morty.” Drool slithered down the side of his lip. His eyes barely focused on his face. They danced or stumbled from him to some point on the wall behind him and back again. “Y--you’re not dumb. Actually, y--you’re, uh, you’re a lot smarter than I gave you credit for.” The paternal hand squeezed him in some kind of stilted display of affection. Morty started to get scared. When did he ever apologize? When did he ever call Morty anything but a dumbass? How much had he drunk?

He pulled Morty onto the couch so that he now lied on top of his grandpa. He rolled over to the side and watched his next moves carefully. Rick’s arm draped around Morty’s neck, preventing him from pulling away any farther. He was flush against his grandfather. Morty’s hand dug into the fabric of his pants leg in an attempt to keep ahold of reality.

“You--you’re a, you’re a good boy, Morty.” Then he did the worst: he bent down to kiss the top of his head. Morty, without thinking, scratched the spot his lips touched.

He had no idea how long they sat together like that. It didn’t really matter what they shared, Rick would forget it all in the morning.

***

Morty made nothing of the drunken confession, nor did he make anything out of the fact that a few days later, for the first time, Rick asked his opinion on something.

He showed him a drawing for a remote that would turn people into sheep.

“What do you think?”

“I, uh, I think, maybe--.” Morty winced as he gave some constructive criticism to the smartest man in the universe. “Maybe the, the dials to change the settings -- the, the species -- should be fa--farther away from the power button. So, you know, you don’t accidentally turn them into a mountain goat instead of a normal, a regular sheep. Does that -- does that make sense?”

He nodded, seeming to consider it while evaluating the drawing in his hands.

The real surprise came when he showed him the finished prototype, and Morty saw that he had actually taken the advice to put the species and size dials farther at the top instead of to either side of the trigger.

“Wow, that’s -- so wh--what are you gonna do with it?”

“Turn people into sheep, duh.”

He made two, and they spent the next day transforming convicts into domestic sheep, then helping some villagers of a pre-Space Age planet shear them for wool.

Tufts of wool hitchhiked on their clothes, and they brushed them off in the living room.

“You missed a spot.” Rick pointed to a spot on Morty’s chest. He looked down. Oh, what you do know, he really did have a piece of -- a finger flicked his nose hard.

He rubbed his nose. He stung a little. He fell for that every time. “Oh yeah, well, you missed a spot too.” He pointed toward a spot on his back.

“Yeah, right.”

“No, I’m serious, it’s right here.” He reached for the ball of wool on his lower back, but like a liquid, he seemed to bend and flow away from his fingers.

Rick sighed. “Look, let’s just--.” He pulled the sweater over his head. His hair floated from the static. He investigated the sweater, picking at pieces of fur that didn’t want to come off, nonchalantly half naked. He flicked the fur in Morty’s direction, more out of carelessness than a desire to hit him. He had to step farther back to avoid the fuzzy projectiles.

Growing bored of the activity, he flung the sweater behind the couch and plopped down to watch some interdimensional talent show. He didn’t care at all that he didn’t wear a shirt.

Morty cared far too much. He snuck glances that would have burned holes through walls but that didn’t penetrate Rick’s unerring focus on the screen. But he should have known that nothing escaped his attention.

“Wh--what are you staring at, Morty?”

“Huh?” He was fairly sure his mouth hung open, he was so preoccupied.

“You don’t see me staring at your, at your scrawny little ass. What, is something growing on me?” He made a show of inspecting his upper body for random alien growths. He pretended to be annoyed that Morty couldn’t keep his eyes to himself, but Morty could tell when he bluffed. He either didn’t care or he secretly enjoyed the open admiration.

He sat down next to him, trying not to let his head touch the arm that rested on the top of the couch. Maybe he sat a little closer than normal, especially considering that he rubbed shoulders with his bare upper body, but Rick didn’t move away.

***

They watched in horrid fascination at the Cronenbergs crawling in their own muck. They couldn’t tell if it was a movie, a livestream, or a nature show, but it captivated them nonetheless. Something about the wet, sucking sounds really turned their stomachs. When one of the monsters began devouring a smaller creature that resembled a tumorous cat, Morty shrank against his grandfather. Rick wore nothing but underwear as a form of protest against doing the laundry, a responsibility that technically fell on Morty. Morty, instead of going au naturel, just wore the same clothes that he wore last week. 

Morty absentmindedly played with Rick’s bony hand. It rested on his metal leg, and he rolled the palm of his hand against the knuckles. He figured that he was too engrossed in the spectacle of the monster spitting out a pile of misshapen bones to notice or care that Morty invaded his personal space. 

Marveling that he hadn’t been pushed away yet, he picked the hand up, testing the weight of it, reading the lines in the palm, feeling a callus on the ring finger. 

He choked back a squeak when he noticed that Rick stared right at him, fully aware that he held something that wasn’t his. He wore an unreadable expression. He was too surprised to let go of the hand, or do much of anything besides wait for the inevitable tirade about being a weird little fuck that needed to mind his own business. But nothing came of it. He didn’t pull the hand away, just bounced glances from it to Morty’s petrified face.

Morty finally mustered up the courage to let the hand return to its rightful owner. Rick rubbed circles over the top of it with his other hand, almost nervously.

They said nothing about the incident, as at that moment another, even bigger monster came to devour the original one.


	18. Love Is Blind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains triggering subject material (non-consensual sex in detail).

A-02 aimlessly wandered the sidewalks that day. He tried to dodge Ricks whenever possible, which naturally led him toward Mortytown, which most Ricks avoided out of principle.

He saw Mortys duck behind alleyways to watch him distrustfully at his passing. As he walked by a narrow gap between two buildings, a pair of slender arms wrapped around him to pull him deeper into the alley.

A strange Rick held him flush. He didn’t struggle. In this strange place, he didn’t want to attract attention to himself, as he couldn’t know if it would lure more Ricks or malicious Mortys to his location.

The Rick held a finger to his lips, bidding him to keep quiet. He did so; he had no clue what this Rick’s intentions were, whether they were good or bad. He pulled him by the arm out into the sidewalk, but not before scanning both directions for pedestrians or cars. Neither were anywhere to be seen. The streets and the sidewalks were silent. Not even the Mortys he had noticed when he first got to Mortytown were visible. 

He led him past the empty buildings, never letting go of his arm. This was the second time today that a Rick led him to an unknown, probably dangerous, destination.

Between two storefronts for lease stood a narrow door. The Rick pushed it open, and they walked up a steep flight of stairs in the dark. Another door at the top stood ajar. Red light splashed the dark walls of the stairway. Inside this door, a red room swam under a smoky haze. 

Another Rick sprawled out on a ripped sofa. Shadows flitted in the other rooms. He let out a puff of smoke like a recumbent dragon before turning his head to meet the newcomers. Morty noticed with a start that the man had no eyes.

“Hello, D-013. Did you bring me my Morty?”

“Yes. I have him.” The Rick who held him captive squeezed his forearm tighter. He didn’t like this place anymore than Morty did. Blind Rick bared his teeth in some grotesque imitation of a smile.

“Thank you. You’ve done me a service. I’ll have to get your invisibility collar out of storage. One of my Mortys will get it. Come back in a few days.”

The other Rick slipped out as soon as politeness allowed. This left A-02 standing in the smoking room in front of a Rick who managed to stare into him without eyes.

“Come here.” He punctuated the command with a flick of the fingers. Morty, trembling, came forward. He now stood in front of him. Like a predator, Rick’s nose twitched. He was smelling the newcomer out. He reached out, hands grasping at the air until they landed on Morty’s waist. He pulled him forcefully closer until he leaned on top of the blind man. Their faces were inches apart. Morty tried not to look into the empty sockets for fear that they could see beyond sight into Morty’s soul.

“I lost one of my companions to a rival drug dealer. You are his replacement. Where do you come from?”

“I’m from A-02.” He felt the breath of the blind man tickle his face.

“Okay, A-02. I will let you rest today. Your room is to the left of you. Tomorrow, you work for me.”

***

Zeta-03118 checked the online classifieds. He bookmarked the ones that interested him. He needed a job, if not for the money, then at least for a purpose. His only friend since Doofus left on his most recent run was a bird that twittered outside of his window. He wondered which founding Rick liked birds enough to cultivate them in the closed city.

Time to cold call some recruitment agencies. He sighed and made himself a cup of tea in preparation.

He pointedly ignored the advertisements to foster a Morty from daycare.

***

Morty asked the babysitter Ricks if he could come teach the Mortys at daycare something useful. With a small amount of donation money, he had bought paper, rulers, and pencils. The babysitters grumbled but acquiesced. He specifically chose this day to come because Rick spent last night high out of his mind, and he still lay in bed asleep and snoring when Morty left him that morning.

He ran a class on technical drawing. Some of the Mortys were incredulous that another Morty taught them about engineering prototypes, but he insisted that it was part of their Rick-centered curriculum. He told them that it would help make them better partners. Eventually even the most stubborn Morty student came up with a design for something that would make their lives easier. Morty blushed when he saw that one of the students had designed a robot that looked suspiciously like a Gazorpian sex doll.

Teacher Rick leaned against his desk, watching Morty take over his lessons that day with crossed arms.

Morty had won the approval of the students, who gladly accepted any opportunity to learn something that didn’t involve how to bend to another man’s will.

Besides a few glares from the administrative Ricks, he came out of there with people singing his praises.

***

“I--I did it, Morty,” he said to the Morty at the clothing store.

“Did what, Morty?”

“I taught the Mortys at daycare how to draft. They were, uh, they were really good.” He neglected to mention the sex doll prototype to the business owner.

“Oh, that’s wonderful.” He beamed with pride. “Truthfully, you have enough money now that you can officially establish a charity with the government. You should talk to a law Rick about it.”

“I guess so. I just wanted to do something small first, you know? Just to get a feel for things.”

“Yes. I understand.”

***

Rick took note of the frantic scurrying of his grandson to gather documentation for some unknown purpose. It smelled bureaucratic.

“What’s -- what’s goin’ on, Morty?”

“Oh, uh, it’s kind of a long story, you know?”

“I’ve got time.”

Rick wrung the truth from Morty, that he wanted to start a charity for Mortys in the Citadel.

“The Society for the Advancement of Mortys....” He rolled the name across his tongue. “Look, I don’t care what you do in your free time, Morty, but that sounds a little above your pay grade.”

“R--Rick, there’s a lot of Mortys out there, and--and they need help to get on their feet. I can’t just -- they need help.”

He nodded but didn’t argue for or against the point. Morty feared that Rick would stop him, but instead he simply watched Morty scribble on forms with the famous Sanchez poker face.

***

At around eight in the evening, Morty put away the papers that he had worked on all day. The law Rick had given him so many forms to fill out, and all of them were pretty much the same thing addressed to different agencies. He wondered why men who hated the government so much bothered with the red tape in their secret society.

Rick took in the goings on with amusement and sometimes a little disgust. He hated paperwork. A few times, while Morty scratched long sentences in black ink, he wanted to take gasoline and a match to the growing pile of crap.

Once he stopped, he said, “About time, buddy. _Ball Fondlers_ is on.”

Morty, without thinking who it was that he touched, ran his hand up and down Rick’s forearm while the explosions flashed in his eyes. Again, Rick didn’t pull away.

***

A-02 met the other Mortys in the apartment after blind Rick let him go. T-1488 was a mere skeleton with skin, wearing a baggy gray shirt and sweats. It was he who told him in a quiet voice what to expect in the house. Throughout the evening, as the thoughts came to him, he piped up with disjointed phrases.

“It’s Upsilon’s job to go grocery shopping and take care of the house. We--we don’t really eat dinner together, just whenever we feel like.

“If Rick asks you to come see him in his room, go see him. He gets very upset if you don’t. You don’t want him to be upset.

“It’s my job to measure out the stuff and put it into bags, whatever Rick says I’m supposed to do. And you, you’re the new runner. Z-100 left one day and never came back. We think he’s dead. So be careful.

“Are you okay?”

Morty A-02 grew paler as T-1488 revealed more through words and nonverbal cues the type of environment he now lived in. He had no idea what caused his companion’s eyes to sink so far into his head, or why the veins in his arms stood out so much, or why he took up as little space as possible, but he had an idea that blind Rick ran a tight ship. Maybe the crew wasn’t loyal to him due to his benevolence, but something kept them in the apartment. He later learned what that something was.

***

The lit end of the blunt smoldered in the haze like a lighthouse cutting through the fog. Morty watched it with fascination as it wavered with the movements of Rick’s hand. The other hand held his flask.

“Want a hit?” He passed it to Morty, who accepted it silently.

He drew in, held it for a second, then coughed it out. He still wasn’t used to the burning sensation in his lungs. Rick snorted. He demonstrated how an experienced smoker held his own and then chased the smoke with a swig.

Morty’s head already felt heavy. He sat on the floor by Rick’s legs. Unconsciously, he leaned his head onto them for support. Rick didn’t move.

In a moment of camaraderie, Rick stuck a hand out to run through Morty’s hair.

“Mmmmm.” He closed his eyes. Those hands that brought destruction were now massaging his scalp in some sort of strange gesture of fatherly affection.

“H--hey, Rick?”

“Mm?” 

“Do you really think I’m smart?”

His hand stilled. He drew it back. He needed it by his side so he could think. He puffed one more time, took a long draft, then shifted positions.

“Wh--when did I say that?”

“You were really drunk, and you kinda said I was.”

“I don’t remember that.” He did remember that.

“Well, do you think so? Am I smart?”

He sighed. He looked very old in that moment. He ran his hand through his own hair. “I made that--that brain wave scrambler for you, didn’t I? I--I wouldn’t have done that if your brain waves were average. Make of that what you will.”

Morty couldn’t help but beam at the indirect praise. 

“You’re still Jerry’s son though.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He liked his father, as dumb as he might be sometimes.

“You want another hit or not?” He took it from him and coughed some more. Rick’s hand returned to his hair.

***

Blind Rick’s occupation was to produce and distribute the most addictive substance in the universe. T-1488 and Upsilon-9 depended on it to ward off the shakes and the bleeding from the skin that began a few hours after their last dose. A-02 avoided using it. He even washed his hands after handling the various containers that he ran to dealers across the Citadel to make sure he didn’t accidentally ingest some. Most of his contacts lived or worked in Mortytown, where the lowliest Mortys became hopelessly addicted to the stuff when Ricks offered it to relieve their mental or physical pain. They simply called it “shake” because that’s what Mortys who used it did most of the time, as the stuff was prohibitively expensive to use regularly.

Blind Rick paid T-1488 and Upsilon-9 in it by allowing them to keep a small amount of the production for themselves. Morty refused to touch it. Rick grinned when he heard that.

“All in good time, my friend.” Rick also didn’t use it out of principle. He believed it was bad business practice to involve his personal habits with the product he sold. He instead depended on a constant supply of morphine, originally to treat the pain of having his eyes gouged out but now as a salve for an internal pain.

One day Rick asked for him to meet him in his room. Morty had dreaded the day when his turn would come. After T-1488 or Upsilon had spent their appointed time with him, they always headed straight for their supply of shake and consumed as much as they could before passing out on their beds. Morty walked as slowly as possible, but his legs ate the distance in the small apartment far too quickly.

He lingered at the door, but Rick knew right away that he was there. The other Mortys told him that he could smell fear. He certainly could track the movements of his Mortys by the sound of their socked feet.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Even without his eyes, he still sank his teeth into Morty’s skinny body.

The room was dark, no light and no windows. He didn’t need light, he was blind. It was all one to him. Morty, out of habit, felt along the wall for the light switch, but once his hand brushed the panel, he realized with a sickening sinking feeling that light would only make things worse. He remembered T-1488’s warning that he did not want to upset this man. He figured that his life depended on his next choices. 

He wanted to live, so he padded toward the bed that he sensed the man lied on. He thanked the alien God above that he didn’t have eyes in those sockets that would sparkle with greed. He felt for a spot on the edge of the bed that he could sit down on. He eased onto it so as not to squeak the springs, but he knew that the man would notice immediately that a weight depressed a corner of the bed.

The predator didn’t lunge, not yet. He merely shifted positions as if to consider the best position to jump. The only sound in the room was their combined breathing. Morty waited with the kind of fear that deer felt when they saw the shine of the barrel and saw their death in the eye of the gun.

Rick’s hand landed on Morty’s thigh. He didn’t know yet, didn’t want to know, if that hand knew what it meant to do or if it simply found a vulnerable spot by accident. He sank his claws in him, pleased at what it found. Unluckily, Morty had had nowhere to go that day, so he hadn’t bothered to put on his pants, which still had blood and white dust on them from his last excursion. The other Mortys often lounged in their underwear, since their captor was blind and wouldn’t care. Therefore, he shivered in this warm room in nothing but boxers and a T-shirt while an old blind man touched his bare leg.

His fingers slid farther up, slid under the fabric just a little bit. Morty forced himself to stay still, but he couldn’t control the way his breath caught in his throat. Rick seemed to like the reaction and took it as a cue to push in farther. His hand caressed his inner thigh underneath the fabric. Morty felt a deep sense of wrong that flipped his stomach. Those fingers had no right to be there. They had every right to be there.

In a feeble attempt to protest, he grasped the fingers in his to push them away, but they had a mind of their own, and they took root in the soft flesh. They both breathed heavily for different reasons.

He felt the hot breath ruffling his hair, and teeth brushed the shell of his ear. Immediately heat and nausea crept up from the depths. He had no doubts about the old man’s intentions that night. The hand that deliberated now joined the other hand to grip his hips hard. Fear or something worse shot down Morty’s spine as the bigger man got on top of him, hands still wound around him, leaving bruises. Morty’s hands lay helplessly by his head. Where were they supposed to go? They itched to push the man away. He tried to wiggle under the man’s grip but that caused the hands to slide farther up under his shirt. They would have felt less out of place, less painful, if they played with his entrails. As it was, they crushed his ribs and squeezed the air from his lungs.

They touched noses in the dark. Morty’s head sank as far as it could into the bed as their lips made contact, or rather, Rick’s tongue forced its way into his mouth. Saliva ran down his chin and he shut his eyes until he saw stars, but it didn’t make the wrongfulness any easier to bear. Something hard pressed into him. He struggled anew, brought his hands against his chest and shoved. This renewed his efforts to take everything Morty had. Teeth sank into the crook of his neck and he gasped. Unconsciously Morty wound his hands through the man’s hair, and it felt like a mockery of two normal people together. 

He ground their hips together. His body responded in kind against his will. Electricity shot down his spine again every time he moved. Something worse than fear woke his body up. His eyes remained shut even though the room was completely dark. He was afraid his eyes would accidentally see something even in the pitch black. Behind his lids flashes of light danced in time with his thrusts and the sound of their hitched breath. His hands still nested in his hair; they had nowhere else to go and they needed something to hold onto.

Rick caught his open mouth and bumped their teeth together in a rough kiss that Morty tried not to respond to. The friction felt terrible, it felt good, and when his hand wound around his hard cock through the cloth he moaned around his mouth. He shut his eyes even tighter and pretended he wasn’t there, but his rough strokes kept bringing him to reality and pushing him out of conscious thought at the same time.

The hands that had his hips the whole time hooked under the elastic of his boxers and pushed them down to his knees. The air exposed his body’s betrayal. The rough hand wandered to his cock again, and he stiffened more under his touch. He knew exactly how to tease someone into submission. Morty lay paralyzed, he no longer struggled. He had to let it happen.

The man moved lower, and without hesitation took him into his mouth. Morty let out a choked moan. Besides the occasional scrape of teeth, it felt amazing and horrifying and brought the stars back into his vision. He knew how to make someone come undone. He had his hands on his hips again to prevent him from thrusting up. He was thankful for being spared that further sign of his complete unwinding, but it couldn’t prevent him from his hands finding their way into his hair again. They were too exposed and too useless anywhere else.

He let go with a sick pop. The loss of warmth made his shame all the more apparent.

The worst was yet to come. Fingers grazed Morty’s mouth.

“Suck.” He briefly considered biting them, but those same hands could easily choke him to death, so he complied and let three fingers fill his mouth. He felt like he would be sick from the salty taste of his skin. The removal of them left his teeth chattering. Maybe he should have bitten him when he had the chance. His whole body clenched when those cold, wet fingers grazed his entrance. They retracted, and he audibly sighed in relief. Irrationally, he thought that maybe he reconsidered doing this.

He heard shuffling and tapping fingers on a nightstand. The open neck of a plastic bottle touched his nostrils. He breathed in vapor that waterfalled a feeling of warmth and slack from the top of his head down. His whole body relaxed, even parts of him that he didn’t know could be relaxed. His head swam. He was sinking through the bed into hell. In any other circumstance, it would have felt pleasurable, or at least interesting. As it was, the forced relaxation filled him with terror.

The same fingers from before grazed him again, and he realized with horror that his muscles no longer responded to his emotional state. He was loose and open. One finger slipped in to the knuckle. Morty’s eyes opened before he could stop himself. From the other room, enough light seeped in to illuminate the demonic shape that burned him from the inside. In the dark, he had horns. He crooked the finger up and brushed something that made Morty twist and gasp, creating more friction on the spot and electrifying him more. He could barely breathe; the air felt stifling all of a sudden. He was too warm. He burned up as the second finger joined the first and scissored. He controlled him like a hand puppet. He writhed, it almost hurt, but he couldn’t escape.

The fingers pulled out. Again, he heard knocking on the wooden stand. Something bumped to the floor. A cap flipped open and something like gel squirted out. Suddenly he slathered the cold, slimy substance all around his entrance and something much bigger than a finger pressed against him. The vapor prevented him from straining too much. For better or worse his body was receptive to the foreign intrusion that burned on its way inside, slowly enough for him to agonize over every inch that stretched him far too wide. They panted in the dark.

He was in to the hilt, but he was considerate enough not to push him too far too fast. He moved slowly, allowing him to not only get used to the sensation, but to really reflect on his situation. It brushed past his prostate.

“Jesus!” He slapped a hand over his mouth. Tears threatened to spring forward. He did it again, and the tears stung his eyes but they didn’t fall. Not yet.

The man got impatient and thrust hard. Morty yelped. He hoped the Mortys in the other room didn’t hear him, but even if they did, he knew he wouldn’t have to offer an explanation. The knowledge in their big eyes would be the worst part.

Once he knew he could handle it, he set a punishing rhythm that made Morty see God. It hurt like nothing else and the tears did finally roll down his cheeks, but the combination of the prostate stimulation and the coaxing of his hand still made him cum more than he ever had in his life. Rick followed not far after.

Morty lay there senseless with the cum drying on his stomach. A towel hit him in the chest and he used it to dry off. In some twisted gesture of affection or reassurance, Rick pushed him to a sitting position and rubbed circles in his back. Morty shivered. He was breathless, tears and snot chased each other down his face, and the rough hand that had brought him to an unwanted completion now tried to comfort him. He dried off his face with the same towel. He hoped Rick didn’t hear his shuddering, silent crying, but the man knew everything that occurred in his slum domain.

***

T-1488 made him hot tea with a little something special. As he drank, the headache that had started to develop, as well as the throbbing from the rough treatment, began to subside. It was habit among the other two Mortys to keep codeine in the house for such occasions. 

He still hadn’t taken a shower, just curled up on the tattered couch with the shaking, hot cup in his hands, with T-1488 massaging his shoulders. Rick had fallen asleep in the other room.

Morty was glad they lived in red darkness most of the time, though the yellow light from the kitchen actually made him feel a little homey. There was no living room ceiling light, just one or two red nightlights plugged into the wall. Rick didn’t like the buzzing fluorescents, and out of some old habit, he insisted that the Mortys keep their night vision sharp most of the time. Since shake made their eyes hurt in bright light, specifically blue light, they accepted it.

No one had to say anything. Everyone knew that the first time was the worst.

***

Zeta-03118 Rick found a job selling Morty insurance. It involved sitting at a desk making cold calls from eight to five. Most of the time, he just sat there staring at the black phone on his desk or browsing r/aww after a particularly rude call. It slowly killed him, but he needed the money.

His drinking got worse. All the money he made went toward wine and hard liquor. A small amount that wasn’t alcohol or bills went toward savings.

One day, when he contemplated for the fifth time shooting up the office and every employee in it and then blowing his brains out, he decided to quit. Without alerting management, he cleaned his desk and walked out. Who knew that it took a soul sucking job to realize that one had a soul in the first place?

He returned to the classifieds and to drinking coffee spiked with rum. He tried a job as a researcher for a pharmaceuticals company. He tried to ignore the fact that “researcher” and “pharmaceuticals company” were in quotes. He assumed that the people posting the ad were simply unable to use underlines for emphasis on the website, not that they were being dishonest or “technically” honest. He was perhaps a little naive to trust in the good intentions of other Ricks, but a good man only saw good in others.

Within a few hours of sending his resume, he received a call back from a very scratchy voice. The man sounded like he spent that day choking on nails. Maybe he was a smoker, or he was recovering from a severe cough. Again, another red flag shot up when the man told him to come in tomorrow for an interview. He told him painstaking directions to their office, which included such directives as telling the security guard a secret word and insisting that a GPS would not send him to the correct facility. Again, he assiduously attempted to ignore their overeagerness and their secrecy. He needed a job that wouldn’t kill him, after all, and they advertised that they had good pay and benefits.

The next day, he was decked out in a button-down striped shirt and a vest. He pulled at the red tie that constricted his breathing. He had no idea how to dress or what to expect. Ricks with better fashion sense gave him funny looks as he took to the sidewalks. A few of them, one of whom had drool running down his chin and onto his shirt, jeered.

By complete accident, he had chosen a place that lay within walking distance of his apartment, though he never would have known because the location was unlisted on a map.

The Rick who manned the security booth in the parking lot of the office building scanned his dorky clothes with derision. He waited for the word.

He sighed. “Farts.” No one ever said Ricks were mature.

The red striped gate rose to let him walk through.

Inside the office building, another Rick scanned him with a metal detector wand. The Morty at the front told him to have a seat and that his interviewer would arrive shortly. A TV played the news to the empty seats in the lobby. He wondered if they actually conducted research in this building or if the research went on in an even more clandestine location.

The Rick that came to get him had a five o’clock shadow, red eyes, and short, professional hair. He too cringed at the clothes, but quickly schooled his face into a more neutral expression. He wore a lab coat with technicolor splotches and black scuffs across the front and sleeves. So they most likely did research somewhere in the building, and he must have just come back from the lab to do this interview.

“Alright, no fucking around,” he said in a scratchy voice as they walked down a hallway, the same voice that contacted him over the phone. “The--we always need more men. We’re continually growing, new projects, all that jazz. So if you’re a good fit, we’ll throw you in with one of our new startups. We already did the background check, you’re probably the cleanest Rick to come through here, to be honest. You’ll need to do a drug test, but judging from the clothes I assume that won’t be a problem.” Maybe he shouldn’t have worn a vest after all.

Scratchy Rick ran his hand through his hair, making it stand at attention. “Look,” he said after seeing Rick frown, “we do laugh around here, but this is pretty clandestine work, so take it seriously.” He waved a key card that hung from his neck in front of a keypad. It lit green and he pushed the door open into another, narrower hallway. 

“We like to do the tour while we talk, makes it quicker. If you’re not scared away by the end, then you’ve got the job.” Reassuring.

They passed by a group of Ricks dissecting an alien life form on an operating table behind a thick pane of glass that blocked out all noise. They wore full hazmat gear and seemed to be arguing about something. The leader waved his scalpel around as he gesticulated. The display made Rick nervous about their safety.

He caught his worried look. “Don’t worry about them. You know how it is, you get a bunch of us together, we all think we’re right, we argue. Last time someone got too schwifty with the scalpel, several people died from the resulting exposure to toxic gas. So they know better than to try any freaky shit.”

They passed more windows that looked into empty lab rooms, some with metal tables, some with lines that hooked up to positive pressure suits, some with closed fume hoods standing sentry. One of the rooms housed nothing but empty cages.

“We do a lot of stuff around here, but at the heart we’re a pharmaceutical company, so a lot of our research pertains to drugs. But we’re branching into military research and defense, real serious shit.”

They passed through another door with a key entry. This opened onto a stairwell.

“Sorry, my office is real deep in here. I’m the associate chair of our new defensive chemistry wing. The Citadel asked us to develop some new safety measures in case the Federation or someone catches wind of us.”

They finally came to a hallway that branched off into normal looking rooms with desks and computers. They slipped into a room that listed “Rick Sanchez, PhD, Dim. Sigma-71, Associate Chair of Defensive Chemistry” on a plaque to the right of the door.

He saw him admire the PhD designation. The Citadel’s research university was famously hard even for the best Ricks to get into, much less come out with a doctorate degree. Any Rick in the Citadel with a degree from Earth or another planetary body usually didn’t get the privilege of wearing the title of “PhD.”

“Heh, yeah, I don’t want to brag, but -- fuck it, of course I want to brag. I graduated from Central, worked my way up from undergrad to doctoral student, focused on physics research. Did my thesis on the theoretical use of time dilation to extend the lifespan of people in the Citadel.” Rick’s eyebrows shot up out of politeness and also respect. Zeta Rick had gone back to an Earth institution after Morty passed away, but mostly just for easier access to research chemicals. He did eventually come out with a PhD of his own, but his only acknowledgment of the achievement was a single line on his resume.

“Alright, take a seat. We still got some things to talk about.” Researcher Rick took control of the ergonomic swivel chair behind the desk while Zeta Rick sat in one of the two comfortable but less imposing chairs across from him.

“Alright, so a lot of times the dissection room downstairs scares some pussy Ricks away, and then the rest either chicken out from the emphasis on clandestine, dangerous research or else they don’t want shit to do with us because we’re in league with the Citadel’s military operations. Some free love Ricks don’t like that. Most of the dumb fucks see ‘pharmaceutical company’ and think free drugs. Well, obviously it’s a little more complicated than that. But I doubt you’re the drug seeking type.” He steepled his fingers and shot an eyebrow up as if to beg him to disagree.

“No, uh, no, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir. We’re both equally intelligent, right?” A hint of mockery crossed the researcher’s face.

“I can’t say I have the distinction of graduating from the Citadel’s university,” he demurred.

Like all Ricks, researcher Rick enjoyed the praise at the expense of the other man. He accepted it without objection.

“Anyway, since you made it up here, you got balls. I didn’t expect you to, to be honest. Some soft hearted Ricks really don’t take well to this line of work. And I can tell you have a soft heart.”

Rick didn’t deny it. He was as soft as a Rick could get without becoming a Morty, and they both knew it.

“But that’s okay. You’ll harden up. I need you to listen to me, one Rick to another. You’re gonna deal with some questionable shit, and you cannot tell anyone. You’re gonna sign an NDA, that’s a nondisclosure agreement. If you violate that agreement, you will be jailed at the very least. At worst, you will be executed. The Council of Ricks knows what’s up, and they do not fuck around. You cannot tell anyone what you’re doing, no matter how bad it gets or what fucked up shit you see. Not even to your therapist. You got that?”

Rick nodded. What was he getting into? He knew two things: the name of the company, Sanchez Pharmaceuticals, and that the company dealt with clandestine military research as well as drug research and development. Was he going to sell himself out to a company that could legally kill him? Did he even have the choice to say no at this point?

“I -- I understand.”

“Another thing. No drinking on the job. A lot of Ricks have trouble with that one. But you have to be at peak physical and mental fitness in order to not fuck us all over royally. You have to be mentally present for the safety of yourself and your team and for the lives of every innocent citizen in the city. I know you’ll take this to heart. People have died from drunk Ricks blowing shit up because they were too fucking drunk to realize what they were mixing.”

He sat with wide eyes, not even moving at this point. Sigma Rick knew that he had his full attention. He cracked a smile at his obvious fear.

“Lighten up, buttercup. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He returned a very strained smile. Sigma Rick’s face softened. “Listen, you got the job. You’re the most qualified man we’ve found. I looked at your resume. You’ve got the chemistry knowledge. And you’re not a total fuck-up like some of our candidates. Look, the job’s not so bad. It’s mostly to scare the initiates. I knew you were soft and I wanted to push your buttons a little. So come on. Smile for me. I didn’t scare you too much, did I?” His smile did become a little more genuine at the sympathetic pep talk. He was surprised a Rick besides Doofus could show even that little bit of kindness.

“There we go, there’s that Sanchez grin. Come in on Wednesday and we’ll get you sorted out.” He escorted Rick through the hallways back out to the lobby, leaving him with a “Same time, same place, Wednesday. Got that?” The receptionist Morty gave him a smile and a thumbs up that made his heart ache.


	19. A Display of Kindness

Morty had spent a frantic day delivering signed forms to different agencies across the Citadel. Rick, ever the smart man, knew that it wouldn’t be worth his while to join him, so he decided to sit this one out at home. He envied his position right now, probably still in his underwear and fast asleep in front of the TV. Morty was quite tired. It was about three o’clock and he had been out since nine. The traffic slowed him down immensely, making an hour or two of crisscrossing the city turn into an all day hell.

He needed a pick-me-up, so he stopped in at a Coldstone Creamery. Earth trademarks didn’t apply outside of its atmosphere, so some enterprising person decided to use the brand to attract Mortys like himself who desired the familiarity of home. The inside was chilly. This interdimensional Coldstone offered some exotic flavors as well as the usual Earthy ones, and he made sure to spend his time in line trying every single flavor with the tiny spoons they gave him, much to the chagrin of the Ricks and Mortys behind him.

He thought over his giant waffle bowl of chocolatey heaven that he should stop by to see clothing store Morty, but he quickly scrapped the idea. He ought to just go home and rest and hope that Rick didn’t have anything planned that involved him. He did look over to the ice cream bar again, thinking that maybe he could surprise Rick with something.

He walked out of the store with an ice cream cake, which was never as good as a regular cake, but it was better than no dessert at all. He hopped in the car and drove home as fast as the commuters would let him in a race against the melting of the ice cream.

He blasted through the door with the cake in his arms to find Rick very preoccupied with something on his phone and with a hand down his pants. At the sound of the door slamming open, he retracted the hand quickly and dropped his phone on the floor on accident.

“Holy Jesus Christ, Morty, knock first!”

“But I -- I live here.” His face grew red; the phone still played a very freaky video of two aliens putting things in various holes on their bodies. They both stared at it laying on the ground, face up and sound blaring, neither of them wanting to pick it up and turn the video off.

Eventually, reluctantly, Rick picked it up and closed the browser window. The sound stopped, leaving the two of them and the melting cake to sort this out on their own.

“So, uh, what you got there?” So he was going to try to play off the half chub that still stood at attention through his slacks.

“It’s--it’s a cake. I--I went to a Coldstone and they -- it looked really good. I thought I’d surprise you with it. So ... surprise.” The irony of the statement didn’t escape either of them. “I mean, it’s not like a regular cake, it’s got ... ice cream ....” It’s not like they hadn’t ever been in more embarrassing situations, but it felt a little personal. It was because, for once, Rick had been caught by surprise, and he had for the moment showed some human emotion -- embarrassment -- at the discovery.

Morty put the cake on the table in silence. Rick pulled out silverware and bowls in silence. They dug into the dessert in silence. Morty stared at the wet spot on Rick’s pants in silence. Rick broke the silence.

“Wh--what, didn’t think I could still get it up?” Morty flashed red again. He made it too easy to antagonize him. “You really should work on your stAOEuring, Morty. Didn’t your parents ever teach you not to stare?” He went on: “I mean, at least make it less obvious. As it is, you really don’t make it easy on me.” Morty didn’t know what to make of that last statement. Like all things he said, he tried not to look too deep into it.

Today, Rick wouldn’t shut up, wouldn’t let it go. “Morty, MOEUghrty, I -- I’m not gonna be able to resist forever.”

Morty’s heart rose into his throat. What?

“Y--you’ve been giving me -- been putting me through so much shit. I -- I can hear you in the other room at night, I -- look, forget I said anything.”

“R--Rick, wh--what are you talking about?”

“I said forget it.”

“N--no, I -- I w--want to know wh--what--.” Rick leaned forward suddenly, took his thumb and wiped something off of the corner of Morty’s mouth.

“Sorry, just, you had some chocolate on your face, it was driving me crazy.” He nonchalantly sucked the chocolate off his thumb, which made Morty flip inside.

After a second piece, Rick stood up and said, “I’m going to my room.” He left Morty to sit puzzled at the table underneath the hanging light. He resisted the urge to press his ear to the door to hear what went on behind it.

***

Blind Rick, since A-02 was his newest companion, favored him at first. Morty could barely sit down half the time. When he wasn’t forced to deliver drugs, he lay in bed, aching. T-1488 checked on him frequently. He mentioned offhandedly that he wanted to keep an eye on him in case he overdosed on something. Mortys had done it before.

He hand fed him codeine tablets to ease the pain.

When the codeine kicked in and the pain subsided for the time being, they talked about life before blind Rick, before drugs got the best of both of them. T-1488’s Rick was no better than his Rick now. He had never been accepted to daycare since he had already had a rough addiction to painkillers that his old Rick had once given him for a broken leg, and in the Citadel early on he spent his time in the company of other Morty users in Mortytown.

“A Rick kidnapped me, brought me to blind Rick. He, he gave me all the opiates and shake that I wanted, and I’ve been here ever since.” His face added that it was no choice of his to make anymore.

Morty nodded. He had also been kidnapped by a Rick.

“Do you remember the dimension of your kidnapper?”

“No. I was too sick at the time to remember much of anything.”

“I remember the dimension of mine. D-013.”

“I remember him coming through for the invisibility collar.”

“Yeah.” The price of a human life was one sci-fi gadget.

“What -- where does blind Rick come from? Do you know anything about him?”

“I don’t know. He never talks about his past.”

“What about his eyes?”

“When D-013 came in, he mentioned a bad drug deal. That’s all I know. I’ve been too scared to ask him. He gets upset if you bother him too long, especially about stuff like that.”

“I see.” They left the topic of blind Rick at that. They instead exchanged snippets of news that they heard from around town, including the fact that a Morty from an Omicron dimension had shot up a shopping mall. Omicron Mortys were often known to snap, especially if their Ricks had met a traumatic end. They didn’t know anything about the shooter besides his dimension, as he had refused to answer any questions and poisoned himself with a hidden cyanide pill while he was under interrogation. They later learned, after further investigation, that his Rick had died in a car crash.

***

Zeta began training on Wednesday. The associate chair, his interviewer, assigned him to a group of researchers studying the effects of a gaseous form of fertilizer. Zeta Rick thanked the alien God above that he didn’t have to help invent ways of murdering people. It helped plants grow. What could be better than that?

The team often took potshots at each other since they weren’t exactly going to win the Nobel prize, and they immediately included Zeta-03118 in the festivities. His youthful appearance, accentuated by the fact that he kept the same hairstyle that he had had as a young adult, and the fact that he was the newbie, meant that he often got picked on for not knowing how everything worked. All in good fun, of course. For Ricks, they really weren’t all that mean. They just called him a kid even though they were all the same age.

One of them, whom they insulted for not having perfect vision, showed him around the lab. As he talked, he often took off his glasses to wipe the lenses on the collar of his shirt, which gave new hire Rick deja vu of spending time with his own father in their garage as he cleaned the grit off his goggles. 

As of that day, all the fertilizers they had produced so far did great for the plants in the greenhouse, but they had to wear gas masks because the gas would kill mammals at low concentrations. However, the plants didn’t like it at safe amounts either and only grew ferociously at an unsafe critical concentration. This was a government contract and the department head put the pressure on them to find a solution as soon as possible since fertilizer was leeching into the water supply.

The Council of Ricks really wanted some nice trees at the expense of their population. Rick’s suggestion that they maybe ought to just not fertilize the plants for the time being was met with derision by the team. “That’s not our job, Padawan, our job is to grow some plants without killing everyone,” a Rick with a growth of gray stubble said helpfully. Okay, don’t question the work that butters your bread.

They let Rick watch them work that day, not without frequent jabs at his manhood. By the end of the day, he knew how the equipment worked and, more importantly, the best ways to respond to their jokes.

Near the end of the day, right as Zeta Rick flung a clump of dirt at one of the other team members, the Associate Chair of Defensive Chemistry and the de facto human resources and hiring department, Sigma-71, walked in. He ignored the protest from glasses Rick that the new hire was already literally mud flinging and slapped new hire Rick on the back.

“How are you holding up, kid?” Maybe he should change his hairstyle. They all recognized it as the hair they had fifty years ago and only a few stubborn Ricks kept it that way, himself included.

“Uh, good. Good. They’re treating me okay.” He flicked his gaze toward the hand that lingered just a little too long on his back. He removed it.

“I’d hope so. I told them you were soft and that they ought to treat you easy the first day.” He winked.

“Heh. Thanks. But I can hold my own.” He stood up straighter and they all started laughing, good-naturedly, he assumed.

***

Sure, it was Jerry level work, but it was work and it was fun. He assiduously avoided spiking his coffee with rum in the mornings. He had a job to do that involved toxic gas, he ought to sober up. Unlike most miserable old men in the Citadel, Zeta-03118 easily gave up the alcohol in favor of shooting the shit with his fellow team members while at his sharpest. He needed his wits about him to avoid pranks.

For example, he opened his locker in the closet adjoining the lab room proper, and a bunch of plastic snakes (and one real one) popped out of the open metal door. He didn’t fear snakes, but the surprise nearly made him fall over. That was the work of gray stubble Rick and a Rick that was ever so slightly shorter than the other ones. They portaled harmless garden snakes from a pocket dimension where they kept the rest of their useless junk in a shared locker outside of their lockers, so to speak.

Another good one was spiking the coffee with laxatives, but as it turned out, everyone forgot that one of them (who wouldn’t admit it) had done so. No work got done that day.

Actually, they tacitly agreed to take as long as possible on the fertilizer research in case they got separated at the end of the contract, which set to end two years from Rick’s hiring. Friends stuck together at the expense of the Citadel’s water supply.

For once, Rick had friends. Sure, it was literally hanging out with himself, but he was the only one he liked, and it filled the Morty-shaped hole in his heart. They were the Jerrys of the research department because they weren’t working on weapons of mass destruction or drugs to forget the pain of existence, but they definitely had an easier time at work for similar pay. No one could argue with the salary, the vacation days, or the number of mice they played with before setting them loose to die in the greenhouse. The last part made him sad, but it gave meaning to their short existence at least. Mice and humans died every day for the advancement of science. The chance to die sooner was part of the benefits package as far as most of them were concerned.

***

A-02 watched the preparation of drugs for distribution in the apartment. Since he served as the outside face for the base of operations, he knew many contacts in the Citadel, who in turn knew contacts outside of the Citadel. He had a modicum of power as a Morty. He was let into VIP rooms, executive offices, and government buildings. He saw a lot and learned a lot about what it really meant to be a citizen of the Citadel.

He bided his time. He directed as many questions as he could fit in a day to T-1488 and Upsilon. They answered, happy to have someone to talk to that wasn’t blind Rick. Blind Rick didn’t talk much anyway. He had been smoking more recently and usually let the Mortys do their work in peace as the opium wore off. They were a well-oiled machine at this point. Upsilon took care of the house and procured the precursors for production, T-1488 worked furiously as the mad scientist, and A-02 walked the streets as the distributor, arguably the most dangerous job out of the three. Since he distributed, he was also the main moneymaker of the household. He tried to slip a few bills out of the stack for himself and the other two Mortys, but often Rick would notice that the stack felt too light. He had a preternatural sense for knowing when he was being gypped, and furthermore, he knew when it was Morty’s fault. Maybe he smelled deception from his pores.

Each time it was Morty A-02’s turn, he added another strike to blind Rick’s name in his head. How many were there now? Ten? Fifteen? He tried not to keep too close track. The Ambien helped him forget a lot of the time.

He bought a pocket knife with a curved blade from a store that specialized in knives and swords. Coming home with a sword would have drawn whistles from the Mortys and the surprise and the swish of the metal blade would have alerted blind Rick. Besides, it was ghoulish overkill. He carried the curved knife in his pocket at all times. He needed it for self defense in close quarters.

He figured that blind Rick could smell where he had been. He wouldn’t put it past him. So he waited a few days for his nose to get used to the metal by his side.

At the end of a week, he slit blind Rick’s throat while he was in bed. The gush of blood covered his hand. He held his wet fingers to Rick’s mouth. Morty’s last goodbye? “Suck.” Rick took one long lick across his fingers and he slumped back, dead.

The Mortys sensed death in the house. They felt the soul descend to hell in the form of a rushing electric chill that raised the hairs on their arms. A-02 stepped out of the room. He splashed the stream of water that came out of the tap almost playfully to wash off the blood. He watched the red water stream into the drain impassively. After he thoroughly cleansed himself with cheap dish soap, he turned to give each Morty a look to gauge their reactions. They turned to stone. They knew the new leader of the house.

“Help me get rid of the body.” They immediately got up to curl as much of his body as they could fit into a large black trash bag. It was two in the morning in eternal daylight when they dumped the body in a dumpster. It was Mortytown. The Mortys who took out the trash later that morning didn’t get paid enough to investigate murders, though they looked with ghoulish curiosity at the Rick with no eyes. They threw the bag into the back of the truck with all the other trash.

***

Morty drowned at the bottom of the ocean and floated with the clouds at the same time. Wherever Rick got his shit, it was good. He always overdelivered on his promises for a good time. He finally got a bong from one of those glass shops across town, and they really went ham this time. Empty bags of Funyuns littered the floor. The corpses of soda cans (regular, not diet, fuck that shit) joined their fallen comrades on the floor. They’d clean up later. They had all the time in the world. Their usual excursions were drug runs and liquor store hauls at this point, and Rick had all the green he could want in his pocket dimension, which he graciously shared with his protege free of charge. The crazier shit was what they used the invisibility devices for. Weed was nothing in the Citadel. Why would an anti-government government bother with a DEA, much less prosecute over a plant? They only prosecuted after shake halfheartedly, and that was the most addictive substance in the universe. Morty thought it was because it was Mortytown’s drug of choice.

They pretended to watch the pretty colors and muted sounds of the TV, which had changed to infomercials an hour ago. The infomercials were entertainment in themselves. Interdimensional TV rocked. They both agreed that they needed some real fake doors, one of those long grippy tongs for reaching tall places, maybe a plumbus in the bathroom. They nodded sagely. They definitely needed one of those. They sold them everywhere. Then again, people didn’t usually share theirs, but the duo shared far too much of everything. They shared not only a bathroom, which really got one acquainted with the other person, but they breathed the same air, for God’s sake. That was disgusting enough.

Like right now, Morty sat close enough to his grandfather to breathe the air that he breathed out and vice versa. He got far too touchy-feely sometimes. Rick made no pretense of actually giving a damn anymore. He had to admit that the kid’s complete inability to handle substances was endearing, and he was too high to tell the little twerp to get his sticky hands off his pants leg. It’s not like he could feel it resting on his artificial limb. Occasionally he flung the hand away but it found its way back without fail. 

Rick needed to remember not to get high with him anymore, but he always forgot when Morty looked at him with those stupid big eyes. He hoped his affection didn’t show too much. The little kid latched onto any sort of favor that he showed him and clung like melted saran wrap to his every word. He chose his next steps carefully.

That’s why he told Morty to fuck off every few minutes to drive it into his head that he was not welcome to touch his face like he did that one time. At one point he had a finger in his mouth and he almost bit him in response, but like a lion with its cubs, he forced himself to tolerate it. It was the price he had to pay, the cross he had to bear, for the sex he had with a woman fifty years ago.

“Morty, you were -- eeugh -- a mistake.” He was so out of it that the insult didn’t register as an insult. He wore it as a badge of honor. He grinned that big shit-eating grin that was his resemblance to his grandfather. He hated and loved seeing it on his face. It made the fact that he was petting the fucker’s head a little bit weird for a second. It was like petting a version of yourself from a different time period. He didn’t screw with that timey-wimey stuff anymore, nor would he have gone through with the old fashioned method of ensuring the existence of one’s genes for eternity if he had the choice to redo. But this was okay, he guessed. Maybe not worth all the trouble throughout the years, but okay. Reproduction really aged a person.

The real gut puncher happened right after an advert for a vacuum that transported the dust to a different dimension. They avoided telling where the recipient dimension led.

“Hey, hey, I -- I love you.” He almost started singing, but he shut that down. He stopped petting him and gave him a stricken face that lasted just long enough for him to compose himself again. Was it the song or the sentence that made it worse?

“What?”

“You heard me,” Morty said, uncharacteristically certain. He seemed to sober up and stop stuttering. They both sat up straight, leaned away from each other.

“You -- you smoked too much. I’m cutting you off.” The weed had run out ages ago. From an outsider’s point of view, there was nothing wrong with the familial variation of the phrase, but his fear came from the fact that it may not be familial. Morty was too unpredictable in this state; he played with fire knowing that it would burn him eventually. He assiduously denied that he had wanted to hear it and drugged his son on purpose so the words would slip out. That was ridiculous. That was -- that would be cruel. 

“Don’t -- don’t put your love in -- in people, Morty. L--look at your father. Do--do you want to be stuck w--with a sociopath because you believe in the unassailable power of ‘love’?”

“I’m already stuck, Rick.” Morty’s stare was hard.

“...You don’t have to be.”

“Huh?”

“You’re an adult, Morty. You can always leave. The Citadel is a big place. Go start a business. Work on your stupid charity.”

“I don’t want to leave.”

“If I were you, I would have left already,” he said, quieter.

“You always leave when things get hard.... I don’t.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“You’re a coward.”

They stared each other down. They were both right. Rick couldn’t well leave the situation or else he would be a coward. Morty was already an idiot and nothing further needed to be done on his part.

Where was that family therapist when you needed her?

***

Technically every therapist in the Citadel was a family therapist. This went through Rick’s mind when the thought occurred to him that all relationships in the Citadel were incestuous to a greater or lesser degree. A fully functional society composed of only two people was bound to have a fair dollop of family bonding time. Maybe the fumes got to his head. The fertilizer gas that they tried today killed not only the mice, but the bugs that ate the parasites that hitched rides into the Citadel on people’s clothes and devoured the plants. Their hardy little organic pesticides lived on the plants and protected their green carbon dioxide sinks from dying. It was quite important to the city’s botanists that they used oxygen from organic sources as much as possible, as it was more expensive and less aesthetically pleasing to break water for breathable air. Now they needed to reintroduce the genetically engineered aphids to their greenhouses so they could resume work.

It seemed to him that their fertilizers were becoming more dangerous instead of less so.

As he sat in the break room with a cup of laxative-free coffee, he pondered what it meant to have companionship here. He had never thought of it, but sex sells, and the city probably had the universe’s highest concentration of sexually frustrated males. Funny enough, he had never seen or at least never noticed sex in advertising in the city itself. Maybe he didn’t want to. How could sex sell in a place where all the advertising consisted of portrayals of the same two people who happened to be grandfather and grandson? That had to cross some biological, interdimensional incest taboo. But if there existed infinite dimensions, then infinite Ricks and Mortys had to engage in sexual conduct. With each other. It was just plain old math. What about Ricks and Ricks and Mortys and Mortys? If it was as rare as he hoped it was, then why wasn’t there a larger demand for sex dolls? Was there a demand that he never acknowledged?

His head started to hurt. He didn’t want to think about versions of himself or versions of his grandson getting their rocks off to anything, much less to family. He had sex a few times, but it was never his number one priority. It was quite far down the list for him. Maybe that made him the most strait-laced Rick in the entire Citadel, besides Doofus, who never had children and didn’t seem to care for the whole business either.

He never considered this stuff with his Morty, may he rest in peace. He thought it was cute when Morty had a crush on Jessica. Until he died, anyway. That put a damper on things. But seeing him as a sexual being from whom he could get his sick kicks? Never.

Why was he thinking about this? The steam from the coffee and the way it burned his tongue on contact woke him up a little. He felt woozy. Definitely something very wrong with this gas. He hoped his mask didn’t have a leak. He saw four sets of hands instead of two, and all four of them were blotched with red. Strange.

The last thing he saw when the curtain fell was Sigma-71 standing over him wearing a halo of white fluorescent light.

***

“Geez. What--?” He sat slumped in the big ergonomic swivel chair in the office. He must have gotten a promotion.

Then he woke up. Sigma Rick watched him with an unusual amount of concern. Did he warrant that much concern? Did one Rick ever give another Rick a look like that? It was profoundly pitying. Morty must have seen him wear that face a lot in his last days. What a shame. 

“Hey, bud, take it easy.” He put a hand out to stop him from getting up. He complied. He didn’t necessarily want to move yet, he just thought over and over like a skipping CD that he should move out of this man’s chair, he didn’t belong in it, he--.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He still felt nauseated, but he wasn’t on the floor at least.

“Hmm. I dragged you out of the lab. Gas leak. Thank God the other Ricks were out to lunch. Why the hell did you decide to stay behind today of all days?”

“I -- I was studying -- all these dead bugs --.”

“Uh huh. So the fertilizer killed the aphids?” 

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Well, they put you under my wing to start with, so I studied up a little bit. I’m glad I did. If it could kill those things, then it could kill anything. Including you.” Perhaps to cover up the overbearing fatherliness, he added, “And I didn’t want to go through the whole hiring process again. It’s almost been a month since our last accident too.” He shook his head, disappointed at the turn of events.

“What the hell kind of fertilizers are you trying to make in there?” Sigma chinned up, trying to make the other man smile.

“Heh. I mean, we added a few nitryl groups --.”

“What the hell for? Trying to blow us up?” 

He sighed. “Yes.”

“Maybe we should put you on one of our defensive chemistry teams. I don’t think you’ve got the green thumb.”

He shook his head. Nope. At least he hadn’t killed their stock of grass and shrubs. Not yet.

“Ah, don’t give me that face. I know you like your group. It was supposed to be something easy to get your feet wet, not murder you. I promise that wasn’t our intention.” He put a hand on his heart. Unconsciously, Zeta Rick imitated it.

“Why don’t you take the day off? Technically, I’m not in the same department, but as the de facto HR manager, I can tell you to go home. I’ll deal with anyone who tries to start shit.”

“Th--thanks.”

“Do you drive?”

“No, I, uh, I actually walk.”

“Really? Lucky you. C’mon, I’ll drive you home.” He extended his hand for Rick to take. Absurdly, he felt like a lady being helped out of a horse-drawn carriage. He leaned heavily on the other man. He felt too sick to question why or how this man could leave the premises just to escort a lackey to his house.

He drove a nice car, smooth ride. By the time they made the one minute drive, he had already become one with the leather passenger seat. Again he felt that absurd feeling of chivalry when Sigma opened the door for him and helped him out. “Swanky. What floor?”

“Twentieth.”

“Damn. Well, we made it this far.” Sigma grabbed his arm and hooked it through his. “The least I could do is see you safe inside, eh?” He didn’t complain.

The elevator ride was a nightmare box of bright light and jerking movement. He didn’t remember it being an amusement park ride when he took it down that morning. The change in Newtons made him queasy. Sigma still held his arm hostage.

A quadrupedal conjoined twin did not move very fast, but they did make it to the door. Zeta leaned his head against the cool wood. “You gonna be okay?”

“Yep.”

“Mm hmm. Stop shitting me.”

That was how he invited a man into his apartment for the first time. Should he bring out a bottle of wine?

He fell rather than sat on the couch.

“You gonna be okay by yourself? No, actually, we don’t know what that compound’s gonna do. I’ll stay here.” Sigma made himself comfortable next to the sick man. He sat rather close, but then again, sick Rick sprawled out over two seats.

“Don’t you have to go back to work?” he said weakly from his side of the sofa.

“Hey, listen, pal, it’s gonna be a hell of a lot more work for me later if you die and I have to hire someone else. I’m taking the day off, maybe tomorrow too, and we’re gonna make a party out of it. Got that?”

Rick nodded. He did like the company. Maybe he would feel better having someone else catalog the symptomatology of gaseous nitro fertilizer exposure, especially if he died and was unable to tell the team what happened in the hours or days leading up to it.

Sigma-71 got up and went toward the kitchen. “Where’s your liquor?”

“Wine in the fridge.”

“That it?” He opened the fridge door, which bathed him in angelic yellow light. “Hey, amaretto. I dig it. Good shit.” He pulled out both bottles. “Glasses?”

“To the right.” He opened the first cabinet to his right. Plates. “More right.” He opened the second cabinet. There.

“Great.” He poured himself a literal tumbler of amaretto. “I’m staying the night by the way. I’ll take the couch.” He made good work of the drink by the time he finished his thought. “You still look blotchy as all hell.” He leaned over the back of the couch. He looked like a surgeon bending over a patient on the operating table. He felt his forehead. “Normal temp. How do you feel?”

“Great.” He now sprawled out over all three seats. Rick would have to watch him from the armchair.

“Yep. You look ready to pound pussy.” Sick Rick snorted. He fell asleep and woke up to the same eternal light of the city outside. He hadn’t felt the passage of time at all. The clock showed 3:30 but he had no idea if it was night or day. He wanted to say night because Sigma was curled up in the chair sleeping and the glass was empty by his feet. He felt a hell of a lot better. The red rash that traveled up his arms lightened up considerably overnight. 

He didn’t want to wake Sigma Rick, who slept so peacefully with the dirty, scuffed up lab coat propping his head up as a pillow. He had curled up with his head on the armrest and his long legs hanging off the other side.

Almost on cue, his eyes opened, blinking a few times to clear his vision. “Hey, buddy, ready to pound pussy or what?”

“Yep. Assuming you can find a girl within a hundred light years.”

It was his turn to snort. “I hear ya there, pal. Real sausage fest here, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” He assumed a contemplative air which amused Sigma.

“Head’s killing me. Drank way too much of your shit, I’m sorry. Well, damn, though, how do you feel? Any better?”

“Much better. I just needed a nap. That usually cures poisoning.”

“Every case of poisoning is cured by death.” Now he pretended to contemplate. A literal armchair philosopher. “Assuming the worst is over, you’re gonna live, right?”

“I hope so.”

“Sure you will. I went ahead and took tomorrow off, which I guess is today. So it’s just you and me and the sausage party outside.” In a grandiose, sweeping gesture, he encompassed the large window and the porch, with the quiet, sleeping city lit up like high noon. “You’re lookin’ a lot less ... rashy.”

“Thank you for noticing. No new symptoms?”

“The hell you askin’ me for? I mean, no skin symptoms. No hair fallen out. But God, you really need to look in the mirror.”

“Am I beautiful?” He touched his face. They looked exactly the same except the other man had more of a shadow across his jaw.

“As beautiful as the trash incinerator plant.”

Sick Rick slowly slid off the couch. His legs felt ... fine. He moved, he had control of his legs, he felt his body for painful spots or sores--. “Stop feelin’ yourself up and go to the bathroom. You need to see this.”

He did as he was told, and he stepped back from the mirror and turned around and then faced it again. His face looked the same, but his hair had turned from gray to pure white while he slept. Interesting.

Sigma called from the other room. “Well, what do you think?”

“I think I’m better looking than you.”

“We’re the same person, you piece of shit.”

He came back out into the main room and stood straight and proud. Even strait-laced Zeta-03118 had the famous smile that won females and males and equivalent gender dichotomies the universe over.

“Hey, I got a question. What the hell have the other Ricks done to you? You’ve been spouting shit at me since you got up. Really hit the ground running with the jabs.”

“I mean, it changed my biology. Who knows what else it’s done?” He raised his eyebrows suggestively. He felt cocky about the makeover and had no Morty to antagonize. Rick would have to do.

“Shut up. Your dick’s the same size as every other Rick’s.”

“Did you see it?”

“Jesus Christ, pal, what’s gotten into you? You’re not the man I hired.”

“Sure I am.” He still wore a vest and a button-down shirt. He just had more practice verbally sparring with other sharp tongues.

“I always took you to be more of a tall Morty, to be honest.”

“I see. I always took you to be a piece of shit.”

Geez. Thanks?

“But you took me home, so thanks.”

“My pleasure. I guess.”

“So, err, are you going home soon?” How to make that sound not rude and not clingy?

“Why? You have someone better coming over?”

“No! I mean. No. Ugh, no.” He blew it.

“Ah, so I’m the best you’ve got. Good to know.” He nodded in approval. “I mean, I’m the best. Period.”

“You and every other Rick.”

“Nah.”

They bickered all day until it was time for Rick to leave. Good to know he had a friend in a high place.

***

So Morty had made the confession. It wasn’t just a misdirection of teen lust. It was teen lust plus familial devotion that held the promise of unconditional love. Love was a big word for Morty to be throwing around at that young age. It was a big word for a man like Rick to want to get back into using at such an old age. Rick wished he could relegate that night to the blooper reels on the extras DVD that no one ever wanted to watch.

But even the next day as the fun altered state of consciousness faded into normal reality again, Morty stuck to his guns. Rick gave him so many chances in the past to retract what he said. He never took back the confession that he liked his grandfather a little too much, a little bit differently than the usual family relationship or wacky duo would suggest. And instead of letting the concept sink into oblivion where it belonged, he came out and said, or maybe tried to sing, the big three words that were the bane of every single man’s existence.

It was a lot to take in after smoking that much green, and he had a feeling that Morty handled it better than he did. It blindsided him despite the fact that Morty’s devotion had never wavered. He genuinely didn’t expect it to get this far. Maybe he was in denial from the start.

He would rather rewind the scene and call up the number for the interdimensional vacuum and just clean the slate.

Morty still slept the eternal daylight away. He had a choice: stay and deal with it or leave for a few weeks to think about things. Morty could take care of himself in the Citadel. He still had the keys to the bloodied car hanging near the door. He could leave money for him to buy food or even a sex doll for all he cared. Maybe it would take his mind off of him. And he did say he had a friend somewhere in a clothing store, didn’t he? With the charity paperwork under review, he must have objectives to meet before the charity can get under full swing. Maybe the absence will give the two of them time to reevaluate. 

He grabbed the keys to the ship that he kept guarded in his bedroom. He made sure the door didn’t swing too hard back into the frame when he left.

***

Morty felt the absence immediately. Some things the gut detected before the head, such as the loss of a conscious entity that almost always spent the mornings with him. He knew as soon as he rolled out of bed and cautiously stepped into the living room that Rick was gone. A roll of bills lay on the table. Five hundred, cash. Rick dealt with the utility companies and the landlord by himself. That was a task Rick never trusted to anyone, not even his lackey. He would have to ignore the existence of those looming bills and hope that Rick had already taken care of them before he left.

As far as the amount of money left for him to use, that more than adequately covered his grocery bills for one month as well as any incidentals that might pop up. He rolled his eyes. Rick always joked that if he had to go do business, he would give Morty money to buy a non-Gazorpian sex doll. He was pretty sure that’s why five hundred and not a more modest amount of money sat on the table. Either that or he was worried he wouldn’t be back in one month.

Of course it hurt. He abandoned his family for the third time to do fuck all somewhere else in the universe for who knows how long without any explanation. He assumed that he would return in four weeks’ time at minimum. He couldn’t leave forever. He would have taken more of his stuff if he meant to fuck off for good.

The paperwork had been given to the right government agencies at the right addresses, he hoped, and it would be at least a week before he heard anything back from them. So he lost a week to bureaucracy. This gave him time to plan his next moves for the charity without the looming threat of an adventure on Rick’s part.

A little glumly, he kicked a rolled up ball of socks across the floor from the living room to the washer. He used to play soccer, but an intergalactic education focused very little on structured athleticism. It was more life or death scenarios every few weeks that sharpened his physique. The amount of high stakes shenanigans had gone down since they moved to the Citadel, but there were a few and he made sure to at least do some sit ups occasionally in case something popped up that neither of them expected.

He ought to talk to clothing store Morty more. He had nothing better to do. It might give him direction to make SAM officially public.

He put on pants and shoes, took the keys hanging off the hook, and drove down to the suburbs.

Clothing store Morty greeted him warmly. “How are you, Morty?”

“Good, Morty. I s--sent the paperwork to all those different places, I’m still, uh, still waiting to hear back from them. I can’t see why they wouldn’t allow it, right?”

“I don’t see why not,” he said optimistically. Underneath the statement ran the challenge to the bureaucrats to find a good reason to deny the charity its official status or else expect to get wrecked.

“Yeah, so that’s done.... M--my, my R--Rick, he’s ... gone.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Not gone forever, I mean! He left me some money. He’ll be back. Yeah, definitely. A few weeks tops.” Was he trying to convince clothing store Morty or himself of that?

“I hope so. The universe is a dangerous place, I hope he doesn’t run into anything.”

“Heh, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his head nervously. “I mean, he--he didn’t get to be that old for -- for no reason, you know?”

Morty nodded in agreement.

“So, in better news, some Mortys came in here without pants and they, well, they wanted pants first, but after they got those then they wanted to know when another Morty was going to come teach them something cool. They said the teachers are a real drag, like Professor Snape levels of bad. I think they like the break in the monotony when a Morty comes in and teaches instead. I recommended crocheting, of course, but I’m biased.”

Before Morty could speak, business Morty continued, “Also, I -- well --.” He looked around to make sure the store was empty. “I raised the prices just a little bit. I added a ‘Morty tax’ so that some of the sales can actually go toward the fund. The Ricks who buy the clothes don’t notice and any Mortys that want to donate to the jar can do that too. I mean, we’ve made a pretty penny.” He leaned over the counter to whisper into Morty’s ear the current amount that was all dedicated for the charity. Morty stood back, and he had to remember how to breathe.

“Wow, geez, that’s -- wow.”

“Of course, if you can get more businesses involved, I know a few Morty owners that would love to help. Then you’ll have all the money you need to run classes for Mortys interested in whatever you want.” In a smaller voice, almost a whisper: “Like crocheting.”

“Th--thank you, Morty. Err, just curious, is there like something else I can call you besides Morty? It’s -- well, I’m -- it’s gonna start getting confusing.”

“Oh yes. I come from Omicron-01. So if anyone asks who you mean, just tell them he’s Omicron-01 Morty. That’s weird, huh, we never bothered to ask each other this whole time?”

“N--no, I guess not, I--I was a -- a little shy. I’m from D-013.”

“Okay. Nice to meet you, Morty D-013.”

“You too, Omicron-01.”

***

He thought that that talk by itself was quite enough for the day. Tomorrow, after getting some thoughts straight in his head, he approached Omicron-01 Morty with a tentative plan.

“O--okay, Morty, I -- I was thinking we could, uh, we could, like you said, get those other businesses on board, do fundraising. I mean, we’re gonna need a lot of money, right? Maybe find some volunteers who want to teach classes on cool stuff like science and cloud watching or whatever. And, and from there, if we get a lot of support, we can hopefully work on some of those really big problems, like Mortytown.” Omicron nodded. It was a start.

“So, did you talk to any businesses about -- about this?”

“Yes, I did, actually. After you left I sent some texts to my friends across town. One of them owns a Coldstone Creamery, can you believe that? And another Morty I know runs a knife shop, of all things. He does knives and swords as a hobby, makes some and sells them. A lot of people in Mortytown need self defense weapons, or just something to cut open packages with. He doesn’t like asking what they’re gonna use the knives for. It makes customers upset. Anyway, they said they’d ask for donations and donate sales money too. So, I mean, you’ve got backers.”

“Gee, that’s -- I’m glad you guys like my idea.”

“Mortytown is our worst problem. If we can help Mortys, then those other Mortys can help the ones in Mortytown too. We gotta stick together.”

Morty personally visited the places that Omicron Morty mentioned. The Coldstone Creamery was one and the same with the one he visited when he bought the cake. The owner was super friendly like the owner of the clothing store. He just loved Earth ice cream and wanted to share it. The knife shop was located a little closer to Mortytown, and it saw a fair share of persecuted looking Mortys that fidgeted and glanced around them a lot. The store owner was a little more grizzled as far as Mortys went; he sported knife scars, a few tattoos on the arms, and he wore black leather gloves. He knew more than the other two stores about the state of affairs in Mortytown.

“So, yeah, the place looks like shit and the people in it are shit. That’s where I come in. I sell knives for self defense, for cutting meat, swords for decoration, I mean, whatever you want, I probably have.” He gawked openly at the glass display cases of vicious pocket knives with serrated edges. Some were better for slicing, some for stabbing. Others could be flicked open instead of having to grab the blade and manually open it.

He stepped out of that store and its shadowy customers and headed away from Mortytown as fast as he could. He didn’t like the idea of close quarters fighting. Usually he and Rick avoided close range combat in favor of getting the hell out of Dodge through the ever-present portal gun. Ammo-based and energy plasma weapons were more his speed.

So he had the support and the sources of income from a few Morty-owned businesses that he could count on.

***

A-02 was the patriarch of the house now. The first order of business was to go out himself and buy the other two Mortys some knives of their own. His man behind the counter recognized him. His man behind the counter sold shake under the counter, which originated from A-02 and blind Rick, who were the producers and wholesalers. Since knife Morty hadn’t expected a shipment nor was he due to give A-02 a percentage, he assumed he came as a customer. Good. He needed some money of his own. Most of his clothing sales went to overhead, and now some of it also went to charity, something he never expected to do but could now write off on his taxes.

A-02 noticed the donation box on the counter next to some fidget spinners that resembled shurikens.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, my man asked me to help with some charity.”

“When did you ever do that?”

“It’s supposed to be a charity to help underprivileged Mortys. I don’t know if you noticed, but you’re living with them.”

“Huh. What about these two?” He pointed through the glass at some evil looking serrated blades.

“Not good for stabbing. More for gutting and fighting in close quarters.”

“Perfect.”

He came out with the bloodthirsty teeth in a paper bag. Out of obligation, he felt that he had to put a dollar into the box before he came back to his underprivileged Mortys. It was supposed to help them, after all.


	20. Rick Redux

Rick came back the day Morty got the news that his charity proposal came back approved. He was surprised, considering how obvious the class divide was, that it was approved in the first place. Then again, Mortys were usually the pencil pushers and probably approved it without their old, higher status supervisors bothering to review it at all.

He opened the door as if he had only left for a midnight liquor run, and to complete the picture, he had a brown paper bag cradled in his arms. It had been two weeks. As far as the serial deserter was concerned, it broke a speed record. He set the bag with a glass thunk on the table and meandered over to Morty, who had leaned so far back on the couch that his legs cut right through the middle of the living room. This required Rick to sidestep them in order to get past and try to catch his grandson’s eye.

“Hey.” He waved his hand in front of his face. Stubbornly, he didn’t break contact with the screen. “Hellooo?”

Okay, Morty was mad. Did the sucker want him to write a love note every time he stepped out of the house?

Finally: “What, Rick? I’m watching TV.”

“No, you’re not. You’re being a -- eeugh -- pissy little brat.”

“You up and left f--for a month without even saying anything! Am I just supposed to say, like, welcome home, like nothing happened?”

“It was two weeks, puss, and I had good reason. And yes.”

“Uh huh.”

“R--really, Morty, I got this right out of the President’s wine cellar.” He unearthed the expensive red wine. “The US President’s wine cellar,” he said with further emphasis on the word “US.” “You know, the place, no, the _planet_ that I can’t show my face in without possible arrest and execution?”

Morty was unmoved.

“Look, this was a big heist, and since you weren’t there to cover for me, I -- I almost got chewed up by the White House dogs.” Contemplatively, he said, “I--I knew they -- I always thought they’d go for younger meat, but I guess I was all they got. It’s like they never feed the damn things.”

He went about pouring himself a glass of warm wine. God dammit if he was going to let Morty ruin it for him.

“C--can’t you just be happy I came back at all? I could easily--.”

That got his attention. He turned bodily to face him, muscles tensed for a fight. “Are you -- are you freaking kidding me? Ma--maybe you stayed too long ‘cause I had time to think, and y--you know what? I think it’s because you can’t handle human emotions.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You left because I said the--the L word and it freaked you out.”

He already had his mouth open but he steamrolled past whatever senseless retort was about to come out. “No, you, you can’t handle the idea that -- that someone can love someone as -- as fucked up as you. Right? Wh--what did you think leaving for who-knows-how-long was gonna do, huh?” His voice rose along with the heat in his face. “Y--you think it’s all gonna -- I’m just gonna forget it?”

“Morty--.”

“Shut up!” He jumped out of the chair to threaten him, catch him on fire just with the blaze in his eyes. Rick no longer held on to the bottle, but his hands did try to snake themselves between him and Morty’s anger. He caught his fist before it could make contact with his chest. This only made Morty angrier and with his whole body, he had them both toppling to the floor.

Now that he had him pinned, Morty lost steam. He halfheartedly swung a few times, but Rick effortlessly parried. After a few strokes, it just became two men lying on a dirty carpet making extended eye contact.

Morty did it again. He leaned far too close, good God what was he -- Morty’s hands held his head in place. He kissed him, gently, in direct opposition to his earlier fury. Rick couldn’t pull away. He let it happen. Morty sat back up and wiped his mouth. He didn’t look angry anymore. He was imploring, or confused. His eyes were big, begging him not to reject him. Rick’s heart thudded. He hadn’t struggled, that was close enough to a surrender.

They got up at the same time. The fight had left them both. They looked in opposing directions as if they hadn’t just kissed, but they were still sitting far too close together.

Rick was going to regret this.

He turned Morty’s head toward him, fingers lingering a little too long. There hung a palpable second of indecision where they searched each other’s faces for an answer, but Rick answered for them both. He clanged teeth with Morty, a lot rougher this time. Morty’s hands hovered for a second, completely swept over from the unexpectedness, and they settled on his shoulders. Rick pulled away when he felt himself getting too involved, before it became too serious. It was an experiment. Yep. Just science. The science of consanguineous relations with your grandson.

He left Morty completely dumbfounded.

***

The whole team glomped him when he came into work next Monday. At first, they simply wanted to offer their well wishes, but then they recognized his white hair. Glasses Rick took off his glasses, wiped them on his shirt, rubbed his eyes, then put the glasses back on. 

“What happened?” one of them asked.

“I, uh, I think the fertilizer changed the color of my hair.” Zeta smiled sheepishly. He never attracted attention like this. Heat crept out of his collar. 

“Overnight?”

“Pretty much. After the rash went away, Sigma-71 told me to look in the mirror, and boom, that was it, heh.”

“Looks like you’re ready to pound pussy.” Zeta turned around to see Sigma leaning on the door. He must have snuck in while the other Ricks admired his hair.

“What’re you doing here?”

“I had to tell you all something.” Even though Sigma directed this toward everyone, he only made eye contact with Zeta.

“The government wants you to change tacks. I reported to my higher ups about the workplace incident last week, and it made its way up to the Council of Ricks, whom, as you all know, are the sponsors of your research.” He surveyed their expressions. “They are not cutting their funding, and they are not splitting you up. They want you to develop your gas in a new direction.” He sighed before going on. “Since you guys seem to have a knack for developing toxic substances, they wanted you to develop something that can be used defensively in a military setting. That means that your new department head is me, associate chair of the defensive chemistry unit. So you’ll see me pop in every now and then, not just as HR but as your supervisor. Got that?”

They nodded. They didn’t care to what end their work would be used, they were just glad they could still work together.

“Alright. I’ve got some other work to catch up on. An official memorandum was sent to each of your emails. Read it and get started.”

They gathered around the computer in the office adjoining the lab proper and read the memorandum from one of the Rick’s inboxes. It simply reiterated the change of direction, as well as listed criteria to which the gas must conform. They reread the line that said it must be capable of being unleashed to clear out large areas of land and that it also must be biologically specific, i.e., it must not kill plants, etc. It also had to remain in the air long enough to kill swathes of enemies but not long enough to permanently incapacitate an area. Well, they got that down already. Their plants thrived under the gases, while pretty much all creatures with a sufficiently complex nervous system succumbed to death or to a change of hair color, in Rick’s case. Also, their gases seemed to be absorbed by the plants over the course of a day, judging from the barometer that read the reduced pressure in the greenhouses. Enough time to kill any organisms but not ruin an area’s habitability forever.

They again asked how Rick didn’t die.

“I think there was a leak in the gas mask and I was exposed to a small amount, but it wasn’t enough to kill me. I wasn’t in the greenhouse the whole time, I was in the break room when it hit me.”

Glasses Rick, the one who had the neatest handwriting, took note of the phenomenon in a notebook. So regular gas masks, as long as they worked properly, shielded them from the effects. Good to know.

They thought the nitro fertilizer gas was too dangerous since it killed the aphids in the greenhouse as well as gave Rick a makeover nearly at the cost of his life. They worked on synthesizing a less toxic derivative that left the bugs and the plants untouched. They pretty much followed the same procedures as before, but this time, they wanted the mice to croak.

The team made slow progress toward a gas that met all the requirements.

Sigma-71 checked on them at least once a day. It seemed that he liked to linger in their lab for a long time to shoot the shit. They all wondered at his preference for picking on Zeta-03118, though he also made sure to pick on the rest of them a little bit too. They also wondered how an associate chair who oversaw several projects and also served as the HR and hiring department had the time to nitpick a small team developing a gas.

One day, as they packed up to go home for the evening, Sigma-71 popped in. The other Ricks were just about ready to go home, and they said their goodbyes to their supervisor as they went out the door. This left Sigma-71 and Zeta-03118 alone in the break room.

He relished in the silence of the room, breathing in the smell of that day’s coffee. “How’re you doing, kid?” His expression, in that moment reserved only for Zeta, was friendly, bordering on tender.

“Good. There aren’t any lingering effects from the exposure. And our work is going good, just slow.”

“That’s science for you. I mean, how are you personally doing? Do you like it here?”

“Oh, it’s great. The other Ricks are -- they’re pretty cool.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d like them. They have good hearts. A lot of them are separated from their Mortys and they needed someone new to take their mind off things. They kinda took you under their wing, huh?”

“You could say that.”

He reached a hand out to rub his shoulder in a friendly way uncharacteristic of a Rick. “I’m glad you like working here. Some people don’t, you know. Sucks for them.”

Something about the lingering hand that slipped down past his bony shoulder to his bicep made him feel lightheaded. It acted like it belonged there. Maybe it did. He had only ever seen women act this way towards him, and he pretended to be oblivious. No one ever got to his heart like Diane. He just couldn’t do it. He never let them do it.

He was being stupid. Sigma was just a friendly Rick, a kind, caring boss with a bit of a sailor mouth. Surely out of infinite dimensions, a jerk with a heart of gold would make itself known in the Citadel.

“Take it easy, kid.” He bumped him in the arm with a light fist and left him to gather his things and swallow the forming lump in his throat.

***

Morty needed volunteers and a building. He remembered those storefronts for lease in Mortytown. They were almost guaranteed to be cheap, but the location was too dangerous. Then again, it was in the heart of the slum where he planned to help. He decided against it. A small, unassuming front near the daycare got his attention instead. It didn’t cost much to rent. The Morty that leased it to him seemed relieved that it was now out of his hands.

Now he had easy access to a supply of warm bodies to help him get started.

He threw himself into his work to avoid having to face the fact that he kissed his own grandfather, and his own grandfather had kissed him back. The charity kept him out of the house and away from Rick’s nonchalant attitude. 

Well, he had the office space. It had been unoccupied for so long that three-eyed mice took up residence in the walls, and he was pretty sure they were building a civilization. He had to go to a hardware store like Lowe’s or Home Depot. Maybe he could pick up some furniture too.

Neither of those stores had interdimensional locations. He had two choices that stood across the street from each other: a Brick and Morty and a Rick and Mortar. The first one was owned by a Morty and the second one was owned by a Rick, but otherwise they looked exactly the same. They even had the same color scheme. The Brick and Morty was owned by a Morty, so he chose that, banking on the fact that Morty owners were usually nicer than Ricks. Ricks were dicks.

The store was bigger on the inside. He wondered if the doors actually led into a pocket dimension, or if hardware store owners simply knew how to maximize available space. A Morty in business casual dress stood behind the Morty at the register. The manager picked up on the stupefaction on Morty’s face.

“Do you want to know the story of this place?”

“S--sure.” He wasn’t sure if he did, but it was best to get on the good side of as many Mortys as possible. His face now represented a nonprofit organization.

“Well, the store across the street, we used to be the same. Rick and Mortar is an offshoot by my competitor when he got tired of being assistant manager and wanted to own his own place. Anyway, he came up with the idea of the inside of the store leading into a pocket dimension. He set up a doohickey, I still don’t know how it works, so the doors portal you into a huge warehouse. We were the first to come up with the idea, but now a bunch of places do it. Wal-Morty is famous for it.

Well anyway, enough about that. Can I help you with anything?”

“Uh, yeah, can -- do you guys sell mousetraps? And -- and a desk or something?”

“Anything you want, sir.”

Another Morty led him into the depths of the store to seek his fortune. He came out with the promise that an employee would deliver the desk and the chairs to his place. All his on-hand money went toward the furniture. He also carried two large rat traps in either arm. He’d have to bug clothing store Morty and the other business owners for more change if he ran into any more expenses. 

He thought that furnishing the office space was enough work for one day, so, hesitatingly, he went home to Rick.

Rick acted like nothing was the matter, but Morty could tell when something bothered him. He didn’t spit it out though, just shuffled away when Morty sat on the couch. The TV remote hung in his limp hand.

“Wh--what’s the matter, Rick?”

He grunted but said nothing.

“C’mon, you’re acting weird. What’s up?”

Unexpectedly serious, he said, “Morty, do you even know what you want?”

“What?”

“I’m seventy-five years old. Th--this isn’t a -- a good idea, Morty. It’s not going to work.”

“What is?”

“Whatever weird shit you’re trying to pull, you gotta stop.”

“What the heck are -- what the heck a--are you talking about?”

“You know what I mean, Morty.”

“No, I -- wait. Are you talking about yesterday?”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t say no, just implored Morty silently to not make him say it out loud.

“Listen, I -- I know what I want.”

“No, you don’t. You’re just a kid, Morty.”

“I’ve--I’ve thought about this for a long t--time.”

“You -- well, you’ve thought wrong for a long time. You’re too young to be doing shit like this.”

“I’m an adult.”

“Not to me, you’re not. You’re my grandson. Y--you’re always gonna be a kid to me. Th--that’s why it’s not gonna work.”

“Yeah, but you --.” He silently added the thought that no one wanted to say, that he had reciprocated. Whether out of weakness or desire or fucked up curiosity, he had done it and it was never going to leave Morty’s mind. “What do you want? Do you want it to not work?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want. You’re a kid and you don’t know what’s going on.”

“Shut up, Rick.”

“It’s not gonna happen, so just drop it.”

“You kissed me! What the -- what the fuck, Rick?”

He flinched like a bullet struck him. He shuffled through a list of human emotions, trying to decide whether he should be angry or pitying or something else. He just looked tired.

“Yeah. I did. And I shouldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

“Because -- what the hell do you mean ‘why not’? Look, for fuck’s sake, we -- I’m your grandpa.” He gestured between the two of them. “Is -- is this what you want? You wanna fuck your grandpa?”

“You can’t pretend you don’t want it. I saw you yesterday. Y--you’re just as fucked up as me.”

“Look, Morty, I may not have th--the strictest morals in the universe, but I’ve got limits. And fucking my grandson is beyond that limit.”

“B--but kissing him’s not?” Rick’s nonsensical moral compass started to piss Morty off.

“Morty, for -- for fuck’s sake, Morty, just let it go. Okay, I fucked up. Is that it, is that what you wanna hear?”

“No, Rick, I want to hear you tell the truth for once.”

“I am telling the truth, you’re just being a little bitch about it ‘cause you can’t get what you think you want.”

“I know what I want, you -- you bastard.” Oh geez, not the tears. Not those. He couldn’t give in, he couldn’t look stupid right now. He blinked away the sting. “I--I hate you.”

“Good. Then stop bugging me.”

“You’re a coward.”

He had that tired look again. He looked just terribly old. Is this what he really wanted? Did he want someone fifty years ahead of him?

“Why are you like this?” Morty asked. “Why can’t you just l--l--love someone? Why do you have to screw everything up?”

He no longer responded, he just stared between the TV and the remote still in his hand. His eyes were tired of seeing and his ears were tired of hearing.

“Morty, just -- just l--leave me alone, will ya?”

Morty huffed and went to his room. Tears finally soaked through the pillowcase. From outside, he could hear the sound of wine pouring into a glass.

***

He still went out as the main envoy, leaving T-1488 and Upsilon to guard the house. The only way people learned that blind Rick was dead was because Morty forgave all the debts that people owed the man. Customers that used to bully him now feared him, the killer of a king.

Morty threw out all of blind Rick’s drug paraphernalia. He couldn’t bear to see the opium pipe or the hookah anymore. He stripped the bed and closed the door. The old man’s bedroom was off limits. The only legacy he had left behind was the old tattered couch, which Morty sat on to count that day’s money.

T-1488 and Upsilon gained weight under Morty’s care. Without the tyrannical, irrational rule of blind Rick, they were free to eat and talk without fear of being called to the back. Morty wasn’t exactly their ruler, he was just their comrade, their business partner. Shake paid the bills and kept them fed.

A-02 bought a lamp that emitted a cozy yellow light. It burned 24/7 along with the light in the kitchen, banishing the rule of the red nightlights. He threw those nightlights away as soon as he could.

Since the money didn’t go straight back out in the form of opium, they started to accrue savings. Morty looked at rental properties on Craigslist. He hoped to get out of that hellish property where bad spirits still collected like cobwebs in the corners. He saw a nice place outside of Mortytown that had an opening. A two bedroom apartment with a place to park a car or a ship. They had neither, but soon they could afford one if they had to.

He wanted to wait until they had enough money to pay the deposit and a few months’ rent in cash. He hoped the landlord was slummy enough to accept cash payment. They couldn’t open a bank account without looking suspicious. Checks were out of the question. Credit cards might work. Prepaid cards definitely would.

A few months after blind Rick’s death, he told the two Mortys that they were moving. They couldn’t decide whether to be happy or to be fearful. Change, even good change, was dangerous. They had enough money in cash to last them a year. They had very few possessions. Moving would be a breeze. They could rent a car, put their stuff in the back, and get going.

Their new apartment looked a hell of a lot nicer. It was a first floor deal that shared its parking lot with a few other apartments. Morty looked with curiosity at a bloodied car in the parking spot next to their new home. Dried brown stains still smeared the grille and the front tires of the outdated brown car. They each moved a bag inside. That was all they owned in the world, that and a huge supply of precursor that still sat in the trunk. They would move that later at night when the neighbors slept.

They got comfortable. They slept peacefully for the first time in years. Two Mortys took the beds, and A-02 slept on the couch. Once they saw the blankets in the light of the artificial sun, they threw them out immediately, so they had nothing to cover themselves with when they moved. It didn’t matter. That was such a small concern.

The apartment was situated a little far from most of their contacts in Mortytown, but Morty didn’t have to go out all that often anymore if he didn’t want to. Blind Rick didn’t and couldn’t dictate to him from beyond the grave how to run the business which was no longer his. Since his retinue was the main producer of quality shake, he had the power to staunch or reinvigorate the supply as he chose. So if he felt lazy, he could let the whole shake economy crash. He never did that because he wanted to keep up a reputation and a source of income, but the option to do so felt good. They felt empowered. They were free.

***

Rick dreaded the day that they would have to start field testing their creation. Like before, the Jerrys of Sanchez Pharmaceuticals stalled as long as they could. However, science takes inexorable steps forward. After a few months, they had a working product: a gas that increased the growth rate of plants and killed everything larger than a mouse. It left nontoxic concentrations after twenty-four hours.

Sigma-71 crowded them into the break room. The Rick retinue shifted uncomfortably on metal chairs and exchanged glances. Stubble Rick had been picking at his lunch, but as Sigma cleared his throat, he put the plastic fork down and pushed the Tupperware away.

Sigma-71, for once, did not relish in the rapt attention of his researchers. He held a paper that he did not read from, but simply wrinkled in his hands as he began to speak.

“The -- I reported to my supervisors the -- the progress you have made. As with all our military prototypes, we must test it in the field under simulated conditions. We have a -- a group of rogue Ricks and some shapeshifting aliens that were intercepted at the border.”

It dawned on the group what he meant when he said “test it in the field.” They were going to murder a group of sentient organisms under the guise of military testing.

“Look. I know what you’ve been doing. You’ve been trying to stall. You’re the smartest men in the universe. You could have come up with a murder machine ages ago. But you didn’t, because you’re also the only men in the city with a heart. You got that? I--I’ve covered your asses long enough. It’s time.” Sigma-71 lowered himself onto another metal chair.

They muttered to themselves while Sigma sat with slumped shoulders. The universe was wrong about the smartest mammals to ever exist. Ricks weren’t always dicks. The ones on the lower rungs of the ladder simply existed to serve the higher ups, Ricks who were dicks and knew how to use theirs to piss on their underlings. They implicitly knew that if they refused to release the chemical composition of the gas and its production steps, they themselves would be sacrificed for the test and the research notes plundered by Ricks who followed orders.

***

Next door, unbeknownst to the Rick and Morty who couldn’t figure out how to have a functional relationship, Morty A-02 counted Rickbucks on the leather couch while the mad scientist, T-1488, nearly scorched his product while he purified it. Upsilon-9 waved a dirty rag around to dispel the smoke, trying to prevent the smoke alarm from crying.

“Geez, T, what’re you doing over there?” He grinned. Things happened. Blind Rick would have thrown a fit. He could still see the way he blew smoke out of his nostrils when he was mad.

“J--just trying to make some shake for myself, A-02. I, uh, must’ve looked away too long or something.” He still acted like A-02 would transform into blind Rick and hit him or yell at him, but he never did. If a step in the chemical reaction went wrong, he simply shrugged it off. They had plenty of money to spare for more precursor material. And as far as burning the apartment down, they had a fire extinguisher for a reason.

“You know I don’t give a damn as long as it gets made eventually, right?” It hurt him a little to see the mistrustful stance of his two friends when they performed the smallest slight. Unlike the Ricks in his life, he knew how to forgive.

“Heh. I guess.” The other Morty rubbed the back of his neck with a gloved hand.

“Look, pal, we made a thousand last night. Let’s get ice cream.”

Both Mortys brightened up. Blind Rick never let them get Coldstone.

A-02 slipped a stupidly large cash tip to the Morty Uber driver, who almost called him back to tell him he made a mistake. A-02 gave the driver the OK symbol and the passengers piled into the frozen wonderland of Coldstone Creamery.

The line in this place took forever to get through because every Rick who was dumb enough to let his Morty come here had to wait while he tried every single flavor. The three friends giggled at the grouchy old men who played videos out loud on their phones while they waited for their grandsons to hurry up. They, at least, had all the time in the world because they weren’t in constant threat of dying of liver failure.

They ordered the biggest, unholiest creations to shovel unceremoniously into their faces while they watched a Rick grumble into the phone that he couldn’t come to that office party because he was going to die of old age in an ice cream shop. The Rick on the other line laughed so loud that they could hear it through the speaker. He insulted the Rick in the shop for letting his Morty crack the whip on him. The Mortys gave each other delighted looks. They loved seeing old men suffer at the hands of their younger partners.

“Hey, Upsilon,” T-1488 said.

“What?” he responded after a second, accidentally spitting out some Oreo crumbs.

“There’s a donation jar over there.”

“So?”

“Look at it. It’s a Morty charity. And there’s a sign that says they need volunteers.”

“And?”

“Well, I mean, you don’t exactly have a job....”

“I keep busy. House won’t clean itself.”

“I mean, I was just thinking we could, we could like, help out. Do something good for once.”

“Maybe.”

A-02 chimed in, “I saw a sign for it in the knife shop one day. I put in a few bucks.”

“Good for you.” Upsilon-9 didn’t seem too interested in the whole idea. T-1488, on the other hand, got more excited.

“Think about it though. Have you seen Mortytown since we left? Looks like shit compared to where we live now.”

“Mm hmm.”

“Don’t you care about your, your fellow Morty at all?”

“Of course I do!” Upsilon slammed his spoon down for emphasis, repulsed by the accusation that he didn’t care.

“Then help me out. I wanna volunteer.”

“Where’re you gonna get the time to do that?”

“Upsilon, you -- it doesn’t take that long to wash dishes, okay? What do you think, A?”

“I think it’s a great idea. Go help your fellow Morty, Upsilon. It’ll get you out of the house.”

“Ugh.”

***

Morty had money that he didn’t know what to do with. Unlike most politicians, he refused to blow donation money on video games and Funyuns. He had the office set up nice, no thanks to Rick, and he had put out signs listing the address and a phone number in the off chance that someone wanted to help. So far, the only texts that pinged his phone were from anonymous people that either asked him if he wanted drugs or if he was a sick Morty lover. Well, of course he was a Morty lover. He was a Morty.

One day while he lounged around at home, his phone buzzed. No, he didn’t want to call so-and-so for a good time. Then he checked the notification for real. Oh, wait, this actually looked important.

“saw your sign. want to help out. when are you open?”

He replied, “Whenever you want me to be. I haven’t really got started yet. Still waiting for some more help.”

“can I see you on Thurs?”

“Yes. Noon?”

“ok”

He hoped it wasn’t a Rick who was going to shit on his desk or something.

***

Morty left for the office. In a few minutes, another Morty stepped out of the adjacent apartment, heading in the same direction.

Morty waited for approximately ten seconds before the other Morty pulled the door open as if he expected a monster on the other end. No, it was just Morty.

The Morty nearest the door wore the same clothes as Morty at the desk, but the other Morty was plain old skeletal. The same size clothes hung loosely around him, while on Morty D-013, they pinched him a little.

“So, um--.”

“Yeah?”

“I -- you saw my poster?”

“Yeah.”

“I -- honestly, I thought you were gonna be a Rick, a--and I thought you’d, like, poop on my desk or something.”

“No, why would I -- why would anyone do that?”

“Because Ricks are dicks.”

“You said it.”

They both laughed politely. They were two Mortys in a pod.

Morty took a deep breath. He would need it. He never thought he would get this far.

He described to Morty his big plan, all of the bullet points of the PowerPoint he had yet to create for members of the nonprofit board he didn’t have at the moment: He wanted to revitalize Mortytown and purge the worst of the drug use. He wanted to enrich the curriculum of Mortys in daycare so that they could compete in a Rick-dominated society. He wanted to help Mortys start businesses and become independent. Most of all, and he said this with the full confidentiality of a Morty-to-Morty talk, he wanted to shake the status quo enough that Ricks would have to respect their Mortys. He ended his talk with another deep breath. That was a lot for one poor Morty to say, much less to listen to.

“Wow, Morty, that’s --.”

“Heh. Is it -- is that okay?”

“Yeah, that’s great. I’m in. What do you want me to do?”

“Well, uh, nothing yet. I mean, maybe you could help me think? Do you have any friends who would want to help?”

“I have my friend, Upsilon-9.”

“Cool, yeah, could you two help me, like, get started?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Well, I n--need some ideas. I got donation jars and signs, and I taught a class once, but I think we can do more, you know?”

“Absolutely.”

“And I have a few businesses on board.”

“Okay.”

D-013 pulled up one of those comfortable waiting room chairs with the plush seat and wooden armrests for the skinny Morty, and he took the imposing leather office chair behind the desk. They bounced around ideas, just the two of them, until the clock showed evening (the unchanging sky never betrayed the time).

They both walked home together. Morty noticed that the other Morty never strayed from his path.

“Wh--where do you live, Morty?” he asked with the small hint of uncertainty that betrayed a fear that this Morty was a creep.

“I live in, kind of a little corner. Chestnut Drive?”

“Holy crap, th--that’s where I live.”

“We’re neighbors? How come I’ve never seen you?”

“How come I’ve never seen you?” He shrugged.

“We just moved in a while ago.”

“Oh, okay. Well, uh, nice to meet you, uh--.”

“T-1488. Nice to meet you, Morty...?”

“D-013.”

“Alright, cool, see you around.”

“See you.”

They waved at each other from the front stoops of their adjacent apartments and disappeared inside their respective places at the same time.

Rick was in his bedroom. He heard the screech of a circular saw as it cut through something. The door was closed. Morty saw that Rick had pulled out a blanket from his room and left it draped over the couch. He curled up with his feet hiding under it. He was happy that he met a like-minded Morty that day, and he lived right next door!

***

“How’d the meeting go?” A-02 asked.

“Good, no thanks to you, Upsilon.” T-1488 pointedly glared in his direction as he bent over the sink, washing dishes.

“I was busy.”

“Mm hmm.”

“Well, I told the guy that you were coming next time, so yeah. You’re in this now.”

“Screw you, Morty.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” He plopped on the couch with A-02, who was absentmindedly flicking through interdimensional cable. He stopped on MRTV: Morty Reality Television.

“Don’t watch that crap. It’s th--the--they’re taking advantage of Morty actors.”

“Alright,” A-02 said, “alright, Harriet Tubman, one talk and you already want to free the Mortys?”

“Okay, _Rick_ , y--you know I don’t like this show. It’s stupid.” He only ever called one of the Mortys a Rick if they sounded particularly unsympathetic, especially if the nonsympathy was directed toward fellow Mortys.

“I’m just joking. Geez, I’ll change it.” He changed it to a rerun of _Planet Music_. “Is this better?”

“No, but I’ll live with it.” He crossed his arms and pretended to not be entertained by planets getting vaporized for singing badly.

During a commercial break, T-1488 turned to his partner. “So, uh, w--would you ever want to, to pitch in? With the charity?”

“If I have time, maybe. I still got runs to do.” Louder, so that Upsilon could hear from the kitchen, “But Upsilon will go with you!” Upsilon, with yellow rubber gloves on and a sponge in one hand and a soapy plate in the other, shot him a nasty look. “I could donate some of our money though. As an anonymous benefactor.”

T-1488 nodded in agreement. Good idea.

***

Rick found Morty napping on the couch, his upper half wrapped up in the blanket he stole out of his bedroom to use earlier that day while he himself slept on the couch.

He lifted the kid’s legs up so he could sit on the opposite end of the sofa, then placed them back on his lap. He flicked the TV on. The boy still wasn’t awake. He didn’t seem to be alive at all. Out of curiosity and maybe concern, he ran his finger up and down Morty’s socked foot to see if he would respond. It twitched but somehow the rest of Morty didn’t jerk awake. He rested his hand on Morty’s calf because it had nowhere else to go. The urge to rub his hand along his jeans came to him. He loved the texture of rough denim. He chalked it up to his days of wearing denim jackets.

Eyeing him closely the entire time, his hand slid up his leg to the knee. No response. He ran his hand down to the ankle and up to the knee again. Nothing. He might as well be dead. It seemed to him that he could do this with impunity. If only he could sleep as deeply as a teenaged boy. He mused about the many times he would have died if that were the case while he massaged his grandson’s clothed calf. He found himself doing it while watching interdimensional infomercials. He no longer focused on Morty’s face to watch for signs of awakening.

The infomercial featured boots for cats. The dimension resembled the one from which they came in every way except that cats acted like dogs. In the background of the commercial, a large dog perched on a dog tree. The cat wore a collar and meowed insistently to be let outside. The owner leashed the cat and they walked about in the mud and rain. “Now, with these rubber boots, you never have to worry about your cat tracking mud into the house.” He let his guard down, and his hand crept above the knee. He kneaded the flesh absentmindedly.

“H--hey, what--.” Morty shifted. Rick’s hand pulled away from the boy’s leg like it had touched hot metal, and it stole away in his inner pocket, where he reached for his flask from which he took a deep drink.

“W--were you, were you touching me?” His voice still carried traces of sleep.

“Not intentionally.” He searched for any signs of suspicion in Morty’s face. He just looked well rested, his face open and innocent.

“O--okay.” Morty rubbed the spot where his hand had rested earlier.

They both watched the next infomercial, which was for a dog tree which had a scratching post incorporated into the base column. The dog scratched at it with a bowed back, just like a cat would knead at a cat tree in their dimension. The dog pawed at the dangling fuzzy ball that hung from the lowest perch.

This time, Rick scratched his fingernails against Morty’s lower leg. He liked the sound of scratching denim as well. He turned a little and accidentally caught Morty’s face. He searched Rick’s face, mystified.

“Wh--what are you doing, R--Rick?”

This time he didn’t stop. He knew it felt pleasant, and since he couldn’t stand to wear denim himself, he enjoyed the rare feeling of it under his fingers. “Nothing.”

“Okay.” Morty lay back down with his head propped up above the armrest. He let Rick play with his pants leg. It did feel nice, but the source of the pleasurable sensation bewildered him. Rick did weird things sometimes. He chalked it up to his many days of drinking and drug use.

He began nodding off again, lulled by the long fingers playing his leg and from the flickering TV that senselessly advertised things that nobody needed.


	21. Save My Life

The higher ups tasked the researchers with continuing to synthesize toxic airborne substances in case field tests on the first toxin yielded unexpected results. Again, they dragged their feet, unwilling to create more destruction. Zeta-03118 donned his gas mask and swept up the dead white mice from the ground of the greenhouse. Miraculously, one of them had escaped death and lay twitching on the dirt. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand. It wasn’t just a postmortem twitch, the poor creature heaved in his palm. He grimaced and snapped its neck. It was done. He dropped it in the biohazard waste bin. They had an incinerator in their lab where they held a funeral after every test.

He dumped the corpses into the chute and closed the hatch. He heard the whoosh of burning organic matter. He held his gas mask in his hands like a hat taken down out of respect for the dead. “Rick.” He spooked. Sigma-71 stood behind him.

“What?”

He looked solemn. “Your friends went home already.”

“I mean, I don’t know if I’d call them friends--.”

Sigma held his hand up to silence him. “It doesn’t matter, _kid_.” He paused for a moment. “You’re always the last one here.”

“I’d say that honor goes to you.”

He smiled, but it didn’t banish the shadows on his face. “I’ve been promoted. I’m officially chair of the defensive chemistry department.”

“Then why the long face, Sigma?”

“With great power comes great responsibility. I’ll have to tell you the worst of it when the team’s here.” He inhaled as if to continue but he didn’t chase the inhalation with a sentence.

“C’mon.” He lightly punched the department head in the arm, to which he smirked. “Something’s on your mind, kid.”

“Like I said, it’ll have to wait.”

“So it’s not just about your failure at seducing women? It’s okay, I’d be upset too.”

He grabbed his shoulder again. He looked pained. The fingers dug into the bone. “Take me home.”

“What?”

He closed his eyes, realizing the underlying meaning of what he just said. “No, you don’t understand. Please. I can’t go home tonight. Let me stay at your house.”

“Why?”

“Please.”

“Okay, okay, just -- just relax, okay?” The hand on his shoulder loosened its grip but it didn’t leave. He held him as if he would vanish if he let go. “But you have to tell me what’s going on.”

“Yeah, fine. Let’s just get drunk and watch TV, okay?”

“Of course. You’re always welcome at my house.” It’s not like he had a Morty at home. Or a woman. Or friends.

As they walked to the parking lot, they saw his car alone in the parking lot, illuminated by a single streetlight.

“C--can we just walk? I--I--the car’ll be fine til tomorrow.” By tomorrow, he meant next work day, Monday. Tomorrow was Saturday.

“Yeah, sure. Whatever you want, boss.”

“You know I don’t wanna be called that.”

“I know, that’s why I said it.”

He relaxed. Some of the tension dissipated as they tapped along the sidewalk. Still, Sigma-71 scanned behind him every now and then, especially when they turned corners. Once in a while, he stopped them both to listen for something that luckily never came. Zeta felt like a ghost haunted them, or at least haunted his friend. They made it to the high rise, and they ascended to the twentieth floor, making small talk about work and other responsibilities. In the Citadel, no one talked about the weather. The weather never change.

Sigma checked either side of the hallway as Zeta unlocked the door. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said quickly. “Where’s that wine?” He beelined for the fridge.

“Got something better than that. Check the door.”

He pulled the bottle out and held it up to the light. RumChata. “Alriiight.” Since he’d been through the drill already, he went straight for the obscenely large tumblers in the cabinet and poured some for each of them on the rocks. They clinked their plastic cups together and lounged on either side of the sofa while interdimensional TV played three-breasted women’s volleyball. Sigma nodded approvingly, either that or he was simply following the bounce of their chests.

“I, uh, I never understood why they made the women wear bikinis.”

“Are you -- are you really questioning why women are forced to bounce around scantily clad for our amusement? What are you, gay or something?” He had already finished half his glass, whereas Zeta had barely started sipping.

“Look, I’m just saying it’s impractical.”

He made a face. “Might as well show me your dildo collection while you’re at it. Fag.” He was master of baiting.

“Dildos don’t make you gay. Taking a dick makes you gay.” And he had taken the bait.

“Keep digging that hole for yourself, buddy.” He gave him the Sanchez grin, the first time he had smiled sincerely all night. He finished off his glass and set it on the table next to the armrest.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence. As they went through the one bottle and drank into the next (Zeta was a huge RumChata guy), Sigma’s previous solemnity disappeared. He sat up on the couch and readied himself to speak.

“You’re right. Euuuugh. Dildos don’t make you gay. But you can’t sit here and tell me that -- that most Ricks haven’t taken a dick. I mean, that’s th--the one constant in all the dimensions. Ricks, Mortys, and sucking dick for drugs.” Somehow his mind made the association, and he ran with it out of drunken, philosophical stubbornness.

Zeta held up three fingers to count the one constant in all the dimensions: Ricks, Mortys, and dick. 

“I don’t think Doofus has--.”

He held up a hand. “I’m not counting him, okay? He’s just -- I mean, you answer me. Have you ever sucked a dick?”

“What?”

“God damn, kid, use your ears. Y--you haven’t lived until, you know, until you kneeled behind a dumpster and just did it.”

“I haven’t--.”

“Then you--.” He pointed at him. “Then you haven’t lived, my friend.” He held a finger up and then said absolutely nothing. His mind obviously took him back to the good old days of selling himself for substances, an experience which Zeta-03118 didn’t share.

“I’ve really only -- my wife was the only one for me.”

“Seriously?” He stopped slouching and sat up even straighter. “You’re kidding.” He began to laugh from disbelief.

He shook his head. He wondered why his boss from work was talking about dicks to him. With some worry, he wondered if he thought about this often in the presence of his coworkers. How did they start talking about this? How much had his friend drunk? What, besides alcohol, had he poured from the bottle?

Ricks often got that paranoia that their words were scripted by a higher being. He definitely had it now. His friend wasn’t acting normally.

“Oh my God, y--you’re so cute, God, so innocent.” He grinned stupidly. His hand, permanently stained brown from splashes of silver nitrate, formed a claw and pinched his cheek. He wiggled out of the grasp of the man’s thumb and index finger.

“Hey, y--you’ve--you’ve had enough. No more.” He held an arm out to stop Rick from getting any closer. 

“S--sorry, I, I drank too much.” Rick said sorry with his big, gray eyes. “You forgive me? Buddy?”

Zeta’s eyes were very blue, which made him look all the more youthful despite the pure white hair. And those blue eyes showed obvious concern, disarmed from the man that was coming undone. “Why don’t you go to bed?” He laid a hand on his shoulder to shake him into consciousness. Sigma looked from his hand to him with no trace of thought behind the action. “Something’s, something’s getting to you. You’re not being yourself.”

“I know. Is--it’s you -- and work. You and work. I can’t do it anymore, Zeta.” He bowed his head. He shook, barely perceptible unless one felt it through one’s hand like Zeta. He was haggard. A shadow had grown over his jaw since earlier that day, and half of his shirt had come untucked from the waistband of his pants. Puffy circles ringed his eyes.

“You can take my bed. You got that?”

“Yeah ... yeah, I got that.” Sigma had lifted his head long enough to respond, but bowed it again once the sentence hung in the air. He made no further movement to get up. Zeta’s hand still gripped his shoulder. Out of some fatherly instinct, he rubbed circles with his thumb, hoping to stimulate him into action. They sat together while the sports channel played the men’s volleyball game, waiting for one of them to move.

Zeta made the first move. He slid off the couch. “C’mon. Come to bed.” He followed dumbly.

***

Since Zeta drank water to chase the copious alcohol, he woke up with only a mild headache. He had left water next to his bedside so Sigma could grab it when he woke up. After he led his friend to bed, he walked back in the living room to survey his sleeping arrangements. He quickly came to the decision to just sleep in his bed next to the other man. It was his apartment, after all. Overnight they had drifted too close together, but he shifted away when the artificial light hammered his head open and awake. Sigma still slept off the worst of it. Zeta always hung his coat and keys on a hook next to the door, but Sigma had fallen asleep still wearing his. His bones alerted him to his old age. They screamed at him that he had slept wrong, curled around another body.

What the hell happened last night? Just a bad dream, right? But the presence of his other self on the bed, still fully clothed, forced him to realize it was real.

Zeta pretended to be an idiot because it was easier to deal with life that way, but he was no Doofus. His boss was hitting on him or something, acting weird, trying to bait him into sharing their sexual experiences. He deflected the best he could, defusing the situation by bringing his boss to bed. But then he went and slept next to him anyway. The only reason he let him into his house the second time was because of the genuine pain in his face and the plea to keep him away from his own house, a plea for help that screamed fear and vulnerability. No father could ever step away from the role once they assumed it. He saw the scared child in the old man and in himself. The fear of being alone -- or worse.

He let his friend sleep it off. The sound and smell of coffee starting roused Sigma from a drunken sleep.

From the other room, he heard a muttered “Fuck” as the man rolled out of bed and let his feet hit the floor with a thump. His hair stood at attention more than usual. “What the fuck.” He rubbed his aching forehead, the empty glass of water hanging in his other hand. “What -- Jesus, what did I say to you last night? I’m sorry. You can take me seriously now, bud, I--I’m sober. Ugh.” He slid into a padded stool behind the breakfast bar and let his head fall into his folded arms. He heard him talk into the countertop at him. “Look, buddy, look, just forget everything from yesterday, okay? I -- I dunno what I was thinking when I came home with you yesterday. I was scared shitless, work’s been a bitch since the promotion--.”

“It’s okay,” he said quietly.

“No, man, no, I -- I had to tell you somethin’.”

“What?”

“I wanted to tell you first, you need a chance to hear this.”

“What is it?” He leaned over the bar across from the slumped figure of Sigma.

“I can’t, I’m too -- hurts too much.”

“Coffee’ll wake you up.” The sound of a cup being set on the counter didn’t make him raise his head. Zeta walked around and put a hand on his back. “C’mon, drink.” He finally sat up to take a perfunctory sip.

“Listen carefully, Zeta. Shit’s gonna go down at the company. You need to get out while you can.” He scowled.

“What?” He returned the expression. He was dead serious.

“I’m gonna -- Monday, I’ll break the news to the rest of ‘em. But --.”

“Why are you telling me now? Why not wait?”

“Because I -- it doesn’t matter, alright? If I told you everything, you’d -- you’d never forgive me.”

Quietly: “Why does it matter what I think?”

“It matters to me,” he said just as quietly.

“It shouldn’t affect your job.”

“It does, it will. When I saw you, I knew from your face -- somethin’ about you, you know?”

“N--no.” He was sober, he had a night to sleep on the things left unsaid, was he really going to say it anyway after that chance to forget it?

He sounded so small. “I care about you. I don’t know what happened, you just get that way about people. You and the team, but you really stood out to me. Someone special.”

Usually the Ricks called him special only to follow it up with “special ed.” He and Doofus, two brothers in adversity.

“Whatever.” Sigma’s scowl deepened. “Is--won’t work.” Leaning his head on his fist, he considered his friend from the side. Suddenly he got up. “Might not see you again, buddy. I don’t believe in miracles, you know.”

“Neither do I.” He stood his ground, refusing to bow to the urge to back away from Sigma’s stare. It said enough. He looked to the ground, face burning.

“If we see each other again after Monday, I’ll be amazed.” He took one step closer, took his chin in his hand and propped it up. Zeta still tried to look away, though it was much harder to not stare at some part of him, namely the hand that held his face. Sigma closed the distance. He tasted like alcohol and morning breath. Zeta backed away from the kiss trembling.

“Kid?” Zeta asked.

“Yeah?”

“What the fuck?” He rarely cussed, but he figured he could throw one out right now.

Sigma surged forward before he could say anything else, wrapped his arms around his waist to keep him from moving away. Zeta-03118 had never found a replacement for his late wife, but he closed his eyes and kissed a mirror version of himself with grayer hair. It was awkward, it wrecked his insides, it slashed his brain to pieces. Saliva dried on his chin from Sigma’s overzealousness. He had no idea whether he should sully the last remaining devotion to Diane, but he liked Sigma, he had to admit it, he liked the tongue that rimmed his bottom lip. It was not perfect, it wasn’t the soft body in his dreams, it was angular and bony and solid and it ate him up. They pulled away for air, snapping a line of saliva that tied them together.

Zeta’s hands were pressed to his chest, and Sigma’s hands had slipped to his lower back.

“You like it, you fuckin’ fag. I knew you had it in you.”

In response, he reached under the waistband of Sigma’s pants, which caused his breath to hitch, and untucked the other half of his shirt. His fingers lingered near his belt. Zeta-03118’s soft blue eyes were hard. 

“Why are you doing this?”

“Why are you?”

They stared each other down. There was no room between them for a victor to emerge from the line of questioning. Their chests rose and fell in sync.

“I always liked the cut of your jib. You’re a different kind of Rick, I guess.”

Uncharacteristically husky, he whispered in his ear, “And I get off on fucking my boss.”

He growled in approval, reaching down to palm Zeta’s half-hard dick through his blue pants. Under the touch, his breathing became more erratic. They wandered in step to the sofa, where Sigma-71 pushed him down. He now towered over the other man and burned him with his gaze. Zeta-03118’s white hair was still a mess from sleeping, and his overly red lips were slightly parted in expectation.

He found that he really liked being underneath someone else. He still directed his own hard stare over the angles of Sigma-71’s body, including the outline of his erection. A moment where they could turn back presented itself. They could both just forget it, right now.

Sigma-71 climbed on top of him, arms imprisoning Zeta-03118’s head to either side. His heart galloped in his ears. “Shit!” He arched up when he thrust forward. The Sanchez grin, usually directed at very drunk women at parties, made him pulse when it was shot at him. He rocked his hips, which drew a protracted moan from the man under him. His arms wound around him to bring him closer, and Sigma’s head naturally fell into the hollow of his neck, which he nipped at. He turned his head to give him better access. 

Zeta-03118 kept asking himself if this was masturbation or sex, but every time Sigma moved, the thought fled, only to come back again in the short interim when he still had a shadow of his faculties.

Fuck, what was he doing now? He slid off, knees hitting the floor, sandwiched between Zeta’s legs. Holding eye contact, he bent down and mouthed at his clothed erection. He inhaled sharply. The appearance of his workplace superior on his knees made him giddy. Besides the color swapped hair and rough stubble on Sigma-71, they looked exactly alike, and a feeling of nausea battled his arousal.

“Y--you haven’t lived--.” Sigma’s slim fingers undid the button of Zeta’s pants. “Until--.” The sound of the fly unzipping. He tapped his fingers on the bulge in his briefs. He hissed as he worked his dick through the Y-front. “You haven’t lived until you’ve sucked your own dick.” He had it by the base. Zeta was mesmerized. What the fuck was going on? A feeling of vertigo threatened him. He was going to fall back into reality, blessed reality--. A tongue licked his underside from base to tip. Before he could stop himself, he said in a low voice, “Geez, Rick.”

Rick Sigma-71 laughed and coughed at the same time. “Morty? Is that you?” They both laughed. Sigma still had him by the dick, which was already getting soft. To save it, he took the head in his mouth and sucked on it playfully. He let out a pitiful whimper. Geez, Rick. The other Rick seemed to like the sound and wanted to hear more, because his mouth slid lower down. He hated the sound of his voice, he was weak, he tried to match the silence of the apartment, but as his supervisor languidly bobbed his head up and down, he moaned. His knees knocked against his shoulders. Lust making him brazen, he reached down to fist his hand through his friend’s hair and pushed him down farther. The man on the ground hummed low in response, which made him tingle. Taking the cue, he picked up the pace and dragged more sounds from Zeta-03118.

It had been a long damn time since anyone had touched his dick. And this other version of himself knew exactly what he liked. He did this before, he probably did it with other Ricks. A flash of heat weakened his resolve. He was incoherently babbling something that sounded like “oh geez” over and over, and Sigma was so absorbed that he didn’t stop to laugh at him. He had his hands on his hips to keep him from twitching. The fingers dug in like claws, and the pain kept him on the edge of reality, the reality that he was being sucked off by a version of himself from another dimension and that he wouldn’t last long at all.

“H--hey, hey, Rick, I’m not -- oh, fuck.” Sigma Rick had started massaging his balls. He melted. He could feel his orgasm coiling to spring, it felt far too soon, it’d been so long since someone had their mouth around him and he wanted it to last, just a little more. He shuffled a Rolodex in his mind, trying to cling to something that would distract him from his impending finish.

“Rick, stop, stop, I’m not gonna--.” He twisted the hair in his hands, but he couldn’t stop another human being that wanted him to -- groaning, his hips jerked, and he released in his mouth. He took a few breaths. “Last.”

Rick wiped his mouth. He wore a pretty proud smirk for a cum guzzler. He climbed on the couch next to the man who still had his dick out.

“Do you, um...?”

“I’m fine, kid. Don’t worry about it.”

“I kinda don’t want it to be one-sided.”

“It’s fine.”

Their eyes were everywhere except on each other. Not that Zeta would know, necessarily, because he just couldn’t look him in the eye even if he wanted to. Post-coital shame hit him hard. Since Sigma-71 neglected himself, he was spared the worst of it. Smart.

They glanced at the clock at the same time and accidentally caught each other’s eyes when they turned back. Sigma, hair poking up from last night and still wearing the stained lab coat from Friday, looked uncomfortable and out of place. Out of sorts. His eyes flicked from the clock on the wall to his partner’s face multiple times, but it was too hard for him to spit out what he desperately wanted to say without words.

“Do you, er, you want to stay another night?” He chose that word instead of the more appropriate “need.” Rick had seen the tensed postures of hunted men all over the Citadel, and his other self was ready to combust.

“Y--yeah, th--that’d be goddamn swell, actually.” In the confines of the apartment, the stamp of pursuers felt far away. It was just two men in a room by themselves, waiting for Monday.

***

On a fine Monday morning (they were always fine because the temperature, the humidity, and the amount of light in the Citadel were strictly regulated), the same Monday morning in which Sigma-71 signed the paperwork that would start his career and in which the researchers found another way to murder mice, Morty had a team of Mortys to delegate. Since they all looked about the same, plus or minus some hair or a few pounds, he had them wear name tags. However, they missed the point of the name tags and all of them simply wrote “Morty.” Close enough.

“O--okay, uh, okay, Mortys, I--.” He originally needed some volunteers to teach because his stutter became unbearable when teacher Rick and the students gave him their undivided attention. But now a bunch of Mortys in his office gave him their undivided attention, and he found his stutter becoming unbearable.

“Um.” They blinked at him with varying shades of irises, greens, blues, and shades of brown. One of them had three eyes, all three of which stared at him plaintively. Three Eyes Morty had sympathy for him as he struggled to say what he had spent all morning rehearsing in front of the mirror.

Three Eyes Morty spoke up. The two eyes in the middle of his face blinked normally, whereas the eye on his forehead flashed a nictitating membrane a second behind. “You wanted us to teach, right?”

“Y--yeah. Well, actually, m--maybe one of you could s--stay behind, and uh, help me do some paperwork. I--I think you should do it, Three Eyes Morty.” Truthfully, he was scared that Three Eyes Morty would distract the students too much. The third eye seemed to see beyond the visible light spectrum into unspeakable higher dimensions. He wondered what happened to Three Eyes Rick. Maybe he saw too much. Either way, the third eye mesmerized him whenever the white membrane flickered across the eyeball, always a half-second behind the blinking of his two eyelids.

“Sure.”

“O--okay, th--the rest of you, the school already knows you’re coming, so ... just go, they’ll put you somewhere. Everyone brought their notes, right?”

Some of them nodded, at least. He noticed the second they came in whether they had a sheaf of paper or something on their person to indicate readiness. He hoped they could pull the subject matter out of their heads if they didn’t have notes to read from.

“Wh--what are you waiting for?”

They mumbled and jostled each other as they filed out through the door. Three Eyes Morty remained, staring around him at the suddenly empty space.

“Okay, you, um, can you help me file some stuff?”

“Yes, sir.”

Morty bent over his desk and made up a shopping list while Three Eyes put papers away in a filing cabinet that he had bummed off an office Morty who was pawning his stuff; he was selling his business and nearly gave the thing to him for free.

Morty had handpicked these Mortys, not that there were many to choose from to begin with. The screening process was simply asking them whether they knew anything cool that Mortys would want to learn in school. Some of them simply didn’t know anything useful, or they were unable to communicate it if they did. Neither of those qualities made for good or interesting teachers. Others sounded smarter than him, and they intimidated him. One of them wanted to teach Mortys how to do first aid in the field. Another wanted to teach them how to home brew beer so their Ricks would be distracted enough that the Mortys could do some actual work (he didn’t know how well that would go over with the school Ricks).

Today, he had the Mortys start something uninteresting but important: how to be an adult. He knew schools never taught kids how to survive on their own, and Morty daycare was no exception. Ricks didn’t value the ability of their sidekicks to perform basic functions like pay bills, do taxes, cook, etc. Many Mortys had lived in the Citadel since they were children, which boggled his mind. Where did all their Ricks go? After school in the Citadel taught them rudimentary math and English, they pretty much dropped the ball on them later on. Teaching them how to be good to their Ricks came next and took up more of their time when they grew older. That’s when the applied science and the etiquette lessons came in. Morty couldn’t stand school anymore now that he watched it all from the outside. Sure, he missed college, but college was kind of fun and it was on his terms. This was just ridiculous. Ricks valued codependency; Morty valued independence.

They had to cover a lot of material in order to teach people how to live independently in case they never found Ricks to call their own. They only got to infiltrate the classrooms once a week, so the adult lessons would take the rest of the semester. He had time. While Three Eyes turned a piece of paper over and over in his hand, unsure of where to stuff it, Morty idly drew up ideas for next semester’s curriculum. Maybe he should throw a crocheting class in there just for fun. It would help them pass the time while their Ricks slept off hangovers. Or if they got seriously injured, it would give them something to do in the hospital. This happened unfortunately often.

When school let out, he let out. He whistled on his way home to his apartment.

***

Something was wrong with his grandson. Rick thought again about testing Morty for diseases and possible brainwashing. The little shit was reading for fun. He lay on his back with the book held at arm’s length above his head. He idly kicked his feet while he scanned the pages. Curious, he peeked at the cover. _The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mortys: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change_. The writers of self-help books were universally panned as hacks, so usually only Morty authors touched the genre. This book was no exception. The author on the spine read “Morty Smith.” It must be from the dimension where everyone was Jerry, though the author’s dimension was not listed.

Rick was glad his Morty didn’t write self-help books. At least something with a little more action, or a well-researched nonfiction book, would be something to brag about. Not a pile of papers that pandered to pussies.

Morty, rather than place it to the side, let it fall to his chest. He lay starfished on the floor, taking up all of Rick’s space. He had to gingerly step around his son’s long limbs, not without some grumbling that Morty had no respect for others. He sat on his customary spot on the couch and extended his legs so that his shod feet rested on Morty’s stomach. He took pride in his own good health when the soles of his boots sunk into soft flesh. He’d gained some weight.

“Hey, c--can you...?” Morty tried to sit up, but when that failed, he attempted to push the dirt-crusted shoes off of him. That failed too because Rick didn’t budge. 

“Do what?” he asked, the picture of grandfatherly obliviousness. He dug his heels in more, which brought an “oof” from Morty. He glared. If he ever called him a brat again, he knew who to blame. Maybe he wasn’t the evilest Rick, but he was the pettiest. “Wh--what’s, uh, what’s that?” Still pinning Morty by the stomach, he pointed at the book that lay on his chest.

“Oh, just, you know, just something to read for fun.”

“Since when?”

“You know, I mean, I’m busy now, I run a nonprofit. I gotta do something to blow off steam.”

“Mm hmm.” He bit his tongue, refraining from pointing out that he did quite enough of that with his constant porn watching. Besides, he was halfway to dyslexic, when did he find reading fun? The emergence of the habit wasn’t a big deal in itself, it just felt out of character for him.

Morty was starting a cult and posing it as a nonprofit. Of course, that was the only logical explanation. He was reading the self-help business book because he needed to know how to be a better figure of personality to his Morty followers. As a rule, Mortys found it very hard to stand out in any way, so they relied on the help of other Mortys who wrote self-help books to stand out.

***

Morty made all of his disciples read that book, so they could apply it in their lives and pass the knowledge on to their students when they taught. Maybe he was starting a cult of personality and it was all thanks to an anonymous Morty writer.

Morty A-02 noticed the copy of it in T-1488’s hands. He looked up when he read a part out loud to Upsilon-9 concerning the benefits of observing the world around you. Upsilon grunted to indicate that he heard while he rolled cookie dough into little balls to place on a baking sheet.

“Hey, you should read this.”

“What is it?” A-02 didn’t like self-help books any more than Rick did, even though it was his anonymous donation that funded the purchase of them in the first place.

“It’s called _The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mortys_.” He tapped on the hard cover.

“I mean, I don’t know....”

“It’s not very long.”

“I like to think I’m already pretty effective, T.” He waved his hand toward the stack of rubber-banded bills on the table and at the scale with a clump of powder still sitting on it.

“Yeah, but--.”

“I’m sorry, I just -- I don’t read much.”

“Okay.” He bent his head into the pages again. T-1488 wanted to be an effective Morty. The good thing about the book was that it didn’t emphasize having an eternal devotion to your grandfather. It detailed ways that you could be independent even if you’re stuck serving someone else. 

For example, it extolled the virtues of education outside the classroom and outside of Rick’s drunken rants. Knowledge was power. And it also had helpful tips on how to sneak in time to take care of yourself in between responsibilities, which implicitly meant in between bone-crushingly exhausting adventures. Funny enough, even without a Rick, the advice was sound, since A-02 often kept him busy with the various steps of chemical manufacturing.

It did make him think, just a little bit, of independence from A-02’s drug money. Nothing lasted forever. Even blind Rick succumbed to an early but well-deserved demise, and he thought the man would live forever on drugs and Morty flesh alone. Since Upsilon-9 didn’t come to the meetings, and A-02 was often distributing drugs throughout the Citadel, the responsibility fell on him to be the better Morty in case something went wrong.

Either from foresight or a simple desire for self-improvement, he started reading books outside of the ones that Morty D-013 assigned them. When he wasn’t minding the lab equipment, he leaned back in a chair, devoured newspapers and magazines, and followed up on wacky Citadel science. Apparently they were planning to do some tests on a new gaseous fertilizer in Mortytown. He wondered why they would bother, but he figured he didn’t know as much as the botanists about the importance of plants in the city.

***

Next door, Morty also read the publication _Citadel Science_ and noted the small blurb about fertilizers in Mortytown. He thought nothing of it except that growing plants in space was really cool. T-1488 and D-013 sometimes texted each other, but neither of them knew that the other had picked up the habit of observing their surroundings critically.

Reading as a form of self-improvement spread through the ranks of the nonprofit and into the school system. School Ricks scratched their heads when they saw Mortys, in between chatting to their friends and playing phone games, reading books thicker than a comic book seemingly for fun. The administration didn’t see the harm in it, because what kind of school, even a Morty school, didn’t like learning? They let it be. Maybe it was an emergent effect of hanging out with smarter, older relatives.

Despite the slow improvement in the Mortys’ attention span and cognitive retention, the administration still had to yank porn magazines, which still existed even in the Citadel, out of kids’ hands. Mortys were always going to be Mortys, no doubt about it.

***

The semester drew to a close. Morty teachers wrapped up their lessons on how to be a functioning adult, Rick teachers concluded with the maxim, “Every Morty needs a Rick,” and Morty tallied up the amount of money that came in from business and personal donations.

He held a meeting in his office on the last day of school.

“We -- this was a good run, guys. I--I’m proud of you. You all m--make me proud to -- to be a Morty.”

The group smiled and high fived each other. Three Eyes Morty stood next to D-013 and hummed low in his throat, which was his dimension’s way of expressing pleasure beyond just smiling.

“W--well, uh, wanna get a pizza?”

The small crowd cheered its assent.

***

D-013 and T-1488 each carried a box of pizza home to their apartments. The group of college-aged kids at the office swarmed over the cheap food like locusts, leaving only a few slices, which they had the honor of taking with them.

“So, uh, you been doing any reading?” D-013 asked, just curious.

“Uh, yeah, actually, I’m -- I’m reading about gene expression.”

“Cool. I read something the other day about why Mortys from different dimensions are so different even if everything’s the same.”

“Why?”

“Because, well, um, how do I say it...? It’s because of the butterfly effect, pretty much. Like, even a breeze could change how a Morty turned out. And it depends on the Rick too.”

“Huh. Interesting.”

They approached their separate doors and busted in with surprise pizza, much to everyone’s delight.

The delight turned to shock when he saw that Rick had somehow smuggled a beautiful, three-breasted woman into their apartment. At the moment his hands were tied, literally. Zip ties bound his wrists together in some perverse show of supplication to the dark blue woman with the long, black hair. He knelt on the floor while she sat, one leg demurely crossed over the other, on the couch. She stroked his head with her manicured nails like she would a dog.

“Um. I’m--.” Morty had seen his grandfather blend in perfectly in a dream sex dungeon, right down to the nipple clamps, but this wasn’t a dream. “I -- I brought pizza. Heh.”

The woman smiled graciously. “Thank you, darling. We were just discussing what to eat for dinner.” She shot his grandfather a look that suggested that food was not their original idea. However, they took the appearance of the pizza boy in stride and decided to take a break from the shenanigans.

“C’mon, baby, y--you’re gonna let me go, right?”

She gave him the most contemptuous, indignant expression. “Why would I do that?” She dug into the box and pulled out a slice, still warm. She killed half the pizza slice in one bite and, standing, tipped Rick’s head up so she could hand feed him.

Morty had seen a lot of shit, but he had to look away either from embarrassment or from the absurdity of it. After he stifled a weird desire to laugh, he choked out, “So, um...?”

She uttered something guttural and completely unintelligible. Morty picked at his ear with a pinky to make sure it still worked. She must enjoy springing her native tongue on foreigners. “Just call me Rose.”

“Okay...Rose. How did you, how’d you get in here?”

“Well, long story short, this beautiful man--.” Again he tried not to laugh. “This beautiful man brought me here after a few drinks. I was being stalked by my ex. I’m glad he got us the hell out of there.” She scratched under his chin and cooed, which made Morty shudder. He didn’t like when people did that to dogs, much less to the smartest mammal in the universe. He always treated Snowball with the respect of a member of the family. Whatever gets you off, though. He just wished it didn’t have to be in front of him while he was trying not to lose the pizza he just wolfed down an hour ago.

“I think we should leave the poor boy alone, don’t you think, Richard?” Richard? Really?

“Richard” glared at Morty, ordering him silently to not say a damn word about this.

He didn’t have enough anal cream in the world to survive another ass chewing out like the ones he’d gotten before for being a cockblock, so he put his earbuds in and prayed for death to take him while “Rose” led her pet by the bound wrists to the bedroom.

***

The Monday after Sigma and Zeta’s meeting of minds, the researchers gathered in the break room to wait for their department head to come in. Zeta wore a straight face and one hell of a hickey. Sigma warned him not to wait for Monday, to bail while he could, but he had to know why. He waited on tenterhooks for Sigma to explain himself all weekend, but whenever he edged toward the subject, he flipped it around somehow. Ricks were good at that.

So he stood with his teammates in the break room, the only one aware that a bomb was going to blow everything up. The other Ricks chatted about the news or about _Morty Reality Television_ , neither of which captured his attention for long. He trained his eyes on the door.

The latch of the door clicked, and the door was pulled outward, almost reluctantly. The face of a man who hadn’t shaved nor slept peeked through the doorway as if to make sure it was safe before entering. He sighed and his black shoes clicked on the laminate floor. He gave them each a look in turn, lingering just a little longer on Zeta-03118. He must not have expected, or maybe he had hoped, that he wouldn’t be here today.

Sigma-71 ran his fingers through his hair, which up to that point had almost been under control, and cleared his throat. “Okay, kids.” His voice sounded scratchier than usual. “They’re rollin’ out the big guns soon. Th--they told me last week, when I got promoted.” The Ricks mumbled to themselves at that; he hadn’t told them about the promotion yet. Zeta remained unmoved. “I’m--I’m head chair of the department of defensive chemistry now. Yippee,” he said the last without any enthusiasm. “W--with that said, my first responsibility this morning was to sign off on the release of some of your chemicals for military and defensive use. So -- well.” He turned his hands outward, palms up. “Well, that’s really all I can tell you. Just -- just keep watch on the news, okay? Keep your heads up.” New lines had appeared on his face overnight. The spotlight of their eyes still highlighted him, and some words that he was told not to say kicked his teeth, threatening to fall out. He hoped his men could read the message on his face.

“You’re gonna make history.” A thumb and index finger massaged the stubble on his chin and neck. “You, Zeta, see me in my office. Same room. The rest of you, check your emails, I passed you a message from the Council. Then get working. Got that?”

They mumbled in the affirmative and they headed toward the computer in the small room adjacent to the break room.

“What’s in that email, uh--.” He resisted the urge to call him “sir.”

No answer, just a silent demand to follow him upstairs.

They sat in the same office in which he had had his interview. The plaque outside the door had changed to reflect Sigma-71’s new position as head chair. The desk was a mess and so was Sigma. He fell into his chair and cradled his head in his hands. “Y--you don’t know what I’ve just done.”

“Sigma--.” He almost reached a hand out to his distressed boss.

“No, y--you don’t understand, I had to do it, my, they--.”

“Calm down, it’s--.”

“My career, my -- I would’ve been fired, they would have found someone else to do it, they would’ve done it by force, please, you’ve got to understand.”

“Understand what? What did you do?”

“Do you know what the Council asked me to do today?”

“N--no, you n--never told me.”

“I had to have one happy weekend left, I knew if I said something too soon, it’d be over.” He paused. “Zeta. I signed the go-ahead to murder civilians during routine military exercises.”

“What?” Zeta leaned back, away from the man who was losing his mind. He was more confused than anything.

“Th--they’re -- they -- the resources, they’re limited, it’s a closed city, pretty much, the Council -- they asked me if we could do field tests. Do you know what that means?” He was frantic. His elbows shifted and scooted sheets of paper across the wooden desk.

“Yeah, I -- yeah, you mentioned the -- the rogue Ricks.”

“Worse than that, more than that, oh, they wanted a larger area to test. It’s all under the guise of a military experiment, but it’s -- it’s not, it’s so goddamn obvious what they’re doing.” He lost control of his voice and it began to rise in volume. “They’re gonna murder innocent people in Mortytown. Th--the -- you know the homeless population, the drug users, shake, all that? Well, they, those fuckers must’ve thought, hey, what an idea, let’s gas them like the Jews, what a way to cut down on homelessness, right?” 

Zeta blinked a few times. “Wait, what -- why would they do that? What the hell’s going on?”

“It’s the perfect crime, Zeta. They say they’re testing fertilizer or whatever, ‘cause that really was their intention, you know. Or there’s a ‘gas leak.’ Oh, but some poor fuckin’ kids in the slums had a reaction to the stuff and they died of shock before the hospitals could admit them. Easy, right? Then they’ll just burn ‘em and it’s like they never existed. Homelessness? Drug addiction? Mental illness? Whatever, poof, it’s gone now. Th--the Council can just -- just do something else with the extra money. No more kids sucking on the system, you know?” His eyes were deep set in his face and increasingly bloodshot. “Oh, fucking God.”

“No, you -- this is just crazy, how does -- this doesn’t even make any sense. No, wait, let me think. You’re telling me, let me get this straight. Look at me, Sig.” He tapped on his arm to get him to look up. His eyes nearly glowed red. “You’re saying that the government is going to exterminate a marginalized community in the slums, because they’re a drain on the city’s resources.” He said each word slowly so neither of them lost track of the main idea. “Right?” He nodded, and Sigma-71 nodded back. “And you’re saying that they’re going to cover it up somehow. Is that correct?” Sigma-71 nodded again. “Do you have the papers that state that that is their intention? Sigma, look at me. Do you?” Sigma had bowed his head while Zeta spoke, but he raised it at the question.

“Yeah.” He leafed through a stack of uneven papers on his desk, which had only gotten messier after his arms had shuffled them around. “Oh, fuck, where is it...?” he muttered under his breath. Zeta sincerely hoped that Sigma had simply snapped due to the stress of his job, because if he was sane and said the truth, then thousands of people were going to be victims of a genocide due to his signature.

“H--here, I -- I have a copy of the -- well, listen, the paper I signed, all it said was that we authorize the use of our patented chemical substances during military exercises. That’s it. But I have another paper, Z--Zeta, another paper, somewhere....” He extended his hand with the copy of his signature and the terms of the authorization. Zeta took the shaking leaf from him and scanned it.

“Okay, Sanchez Pharmaceuticals authorizes the use of blah, blah, blah, in blah, blah, blah....” He reached the end of the document. “Yeah, this is just -- pretty innocuous. Where’d you get the rest of your information from?”

He closed his eyes and forced himself to sit still. “They -- we are involved in the research and development as well as the manufacture of our chemicals. They were required to tell me the amount that we had to make, and I -- I’m -- I was tasked with handling the logistics of delivering the stuff safely. They’re setting up a training ground in one of the empty lots in Mortytown. I know that because I’ve -- I told the delivery driver how to get there. I’ve got the address.” He peeled a sticky note off the edge of his computer screen and handed that to Zeta. Indeed it was an address in the heart of the city’s slums.

“I’m -- I’m pretty sure that they’re going to ‘accidentally’ break all the tanks at once and -- and flood the entire neighborhood. And they’ll call it a gas leak that happened during military training exercises. What testing? No one’s allowed to ask, confidential. Why there? Well, it’s--it’s t--to simulate city fighting, they’ll say. What’d they need the gas for? Zip. Can’t ask that either. They can do it with immunity, Zeta. And the kicker? Anyone who blows the whistle will be flagged as a conspiracy theorist at best. At worst? An anti-government terrorist.”

Zeta couldn’t believe it. It sounded so far-fetched, so ridiculous. “You -- I wish you were joking, wish to God you were joking, Sig, b--but you’re a smarter Rick than me.”

Spent from the long exposition, he said in a tired voice, “Maybe I’m wrong, Zeta. I fucking hope so. Maybe this -- this all got out of my head. I--it won’t be the f--first time a, a Rick goes crazy under pressure. I just -- God, you helped synthesize it, you -- you nearly died from the shit, you know how dangerous it is. But it’s the government and we can’t do fuck-all about where they test toxic gas.” He crossed his arms on the desk and laid his head down.

“I -- I believe you. I think.”

“You do?” He raised his head just enough to ask.

“Y--yes, I -- yeah. I do. I think so. It takes a Rick to know a Rick, and I’m not a Rick. Not like you or them. I can’t imagine a--a group of, of sane human beings doing this, but th--that’s why they’d probably do it.” He threw his hands up. “Just because there’s an infinite number of Mortys to replace them and they just don’t -- just don’t care. Ricks don’t care about Mortys.”

“But, please, Zeta, please, do you know why I signed it?” He resumed his desperate plea. “I had no choice. The -- I already knew too much. So what? I signed an NDA, I got security clearance, doesn’t matter. I know it in my head and that’s enough to be taken out if I don’t comply. I’ve seen it happen. H--how d’ya think I got to be associate chair, huh? Guy died of ‘cardiac arrest,’ said so in the obit. And after I’m gone? They’ll replace me with a guy who’s smart enough to sign it and not think about it.”

Zeta was so tired. He had run a marathon just now at seventy-five. He looked at his friend who had been slowly disintegrating since he sat down, who must have felt ten times worse. 

“Hey. Hey.” He finally set down the papers he had clenched in his fist. “C’mon, it’s -- you’re okay. It’s gonna be okay.” He didn’t know what else to say. He rubbed the other man’s arm from across the table. He had buried his head in his arms.

The bony shoulders of the man across from him heaved. After interminable ticks from the wall clock, he raised his head with great effort. His eyes were stinging red.

“Do you need to go home?”

“I--.” He sighed. “I’ve got a few more sick days.”

“My house?”

“Please. It’s not safe at my house anymore.” Rick Zeta-03118, out of cowardice or out of wisdom, didn’t keep firearms at home. He figured that he ought to draw out the process of acquiring lethal equipment, since every man walked only a few steps away from considering the use of them. And he knew a hunted man when he saw one, a hunter in need of a gun to shoot himself with when the situation was hopeless.

As the de facto HR department, Sigma-71 did not ask any questions of himself when he went home with an underling in his unit at the same time.

***

_HUNDREDS OF CITIZENS DEAD IN WAKE OF GAS LEAK_  
_By Rick Sanchez, K-110-B, IN_  
_Posted Dec 19th, 2015 EY @ 10:55_

_MORTYTOWN -- A leak of an unidentified airborne chemical in the subsection of the Citadel known as Mortytown has caused the deaths of over 300 civilians. Nearly 1000 citizens have been hospitalized in the surrounding area, 700 of whom are in critical condition._

_The cause of the gas leak is unknown at this time._


	22. Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The atmosphere of the meeting of Mortys in Morty’s office was subdued but not completely snuffed out. Tragedies happened all the time, especially in a city full of Ricks. Millennials got traumatized for breakfast; it was old news. Everyone knew what had happened, but the true nature or significance of the event escaped them. The biggest objective of the day was to drink hot chocolate together for an honorary holiday boost, despite the even twenty degrees Celsius and fifty percent humidity of the Citadel’s unchanging weather.

The small amount of business that day was to simply chit chat about what they ought to teach Mortys in the spring. Some people repeated the idea of field first aid and medical advice. Others suggested things like home economics or basic handyman stuff like how to change a tire, jump start an engine, etc. A few wanted to do science experiments all semester. Morty liked that one, personally, though they came to the consensus that they should continue their theme of how to adult from the fall. They unanimously agreed upon the usefulness of independent adult Mortys.

So far, and the program had only begun over halfway through the fall, they had taught students how to pay bills online and keep track of their due dates, how to apply for a credit card and when best to use it, how to write checks and address envelopes, and how to perform basic troubleshooting on a phone or a laptop. At the same time, they had recommended the _7 Habits_ book to their captive audience, some of whom listened and read and told the rest of the student body the gist of it, which was about how they expected the information to get out. 

By the end of the hot chocolate meetup, Morty decided to keep the adult theme up into the spring semester. They had a lot to learn, the poor, undereducated things.

***

The Jerrys of Sanchez Pharmaceuticals ate lunch in silence. Unlike the Mortys who routinely got traumatized for breakfast, the Ricks mourned the tragedy in Mortytown with the solemnity it deserved. They knew who to blame and it had aged all of them. The group knew very well that whistleblowing would most likely get them ejected out of the airlock or subjected to military tests.

It was only the beginning of Rick’s illustrious, murderous career. Despite the horror of bloodied hands that they shared together, none of them quit. Zeta-03118 was too new to the company to receive severance pay or “shut up money,” as the other Ricks called it, if he left. A few of the team had alcohol and drug habits to maintain, and all of them had bills to pay. So they kept their mouths shut.

The notice in their inboxes lamented the tragic accident in Mortytown, and it vowed to never repeat it. Underneath the cursory PR apology, it congratulated the team on a job well done.

Pats on the back, boys, the genocide went great.

Only Sigma-71 and Zeta-03118 suspected foul play; the other men simply hated that it was their toxic substance that spread through the neighborhood, and it filled them with guilt, though they did not believe it was a calculated mishap. The conspiracy may have crossed their minds, but it was unfounded.

Only the private email servers of the Council of Ricks held the truth, but even if it came to light, the Council acted with impunity and cruelty. A Council member could cock a finger gun and decimate an army of outraged citizens with one flick. There was no stopping the ultimate executioners of the Citadel from performing their brand of impartial justice. Really, if one thought about it, the angels of mercy liberated hundreds of Mortys from a lifetime of pain. They deserved the Peace Prize. 

***

Purple bruises peppered Rick’s neck and Morty hated them. He hated himself for hating them. His gaze hopped from one to another while his grandfather, with one eye closed, bent over a magnifying glass. Through the lens two alligator clips held a computer chip into the light as if offering a sacrifice to heaven. Morty, absorbed in his own self-loathing thoughts, didn’t hear the first time what Rick asked him.

“What? S--sorry.” His eyes never left the obscene bite mark that his collar partially hid. It was too wide and too deep to be from a human woman, or at least he thought so. Where did he get it? Some mosquito buzzed in his ear, and he realized that his grandpa was saying something again.

He snapped his fingers in front of Morty’s glazed eyes. That got him to focus for a minute.

“Morty, I don’t have all day.”

“Uh....”

With the greatest pain and annoyance, he said, “I’ll get it myself.” He went for a box on the other side of the room. Wires stuck out from the top like little colorful snakes. Shit, Morty was supposed to help, wasn’t he? But he just honed in on the bite marks, the bruises, and the lashes on his wrists while the man worked.

Without turning around, he said out of the blue, “C--can you -- will you stop staring at me? I can’t solder with you moping.” He put the soldering gun down and swiveled to face Morty. “You --.” He reached for a bottle on the floor and chugged it while maintaining eye contact with Morty for dominance. “You’re really -- eeeuuugh -- really, uh, you’re a pain in the ass, Morty.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He had just been sitting there, which he guessed was enough to anger someone who was already looking for a confrontation to begin with. “Wh--what--what’s your problem today, Morty?”

Morty lifted his hands up with the palms outward, taken aback. “I didn’t--.”

“I--is there something on me?” he said, sounding not too concerned. His hand gravitated toward the teeth marks on his neck, more to antagonize Morty than because he felt any inkling of self-consciousness. Morty bristled. 

“Y--you’re disgusting.”

“I’m desirable, Morty, there’s a difference. Y--when you get my age, Morty, th--the whole universe opens up to you. Men, women, no, a--actually, forget the gender binary, MOOOAERrty, it’s a -- an infinite multiverse.” He encompassed the room in an expansive hand wave. Morty grimaced.

Rick slid across the room to the bed to wrap an arm around Morty’s neck. He leaned in close so that Morty could smell something like diesel from his shirt. He waved his free arm while he talked, never letting go of Morty during the entire speech. Morty was acutely aware of Rick’s damp underarm against his shoulder and the sharp stench of alcohol on his breath. 

“Eusocial organisms, tentacles, Morty, tentacles with brains, and--and the suckers, Morty, you haven’t lived until -- and hive minds, wh--when a--a -- MOEUGhrty -- and invertebrates, there’s no discrimination, y--you gotta break out of that planetary mindset--.”

He preached for some time. Spittle collected on the corners of his mouth. The computer chip and the soldering iron on the table sat ignored while he expounded upon the limitless pleasures of the dimension of immortal young people; the spa where tentacles massaged every part of your body while you luxuriated in warm water, intoxicated by the steam; the hot springs in a dimension where clothes were outright banned; and on and on. Morty had flashbacks of other long-winded, nonsensical rants that usually ended with his grandfather slumped in his chair, asleep. He tried to wiggle out of his grasp but without fail, he’d pull him even closer until their faces were nearly squished together, and they focused on a single point in the distance, both of them far away, riding very different trains of thought.

Beyond the repressed thoughts of incest that he tried to forget, Morty didn’t enjoy hearing about Rick’s sexual escapades. He deduced that it was simply because it was gross on a biological and moral level and not because of jealous undertones. Anything of the sort got repressed along with the other unpleasant memories that Rick mercifully helped him bury.

After an interminable length of time, he paused for breath, which tickled Morty’s cheek. The puffs of air irritated Morty’s eye, and it winked shut. Their bodies were inches apart. Rick pulled him into a hug. Morty’s eyes widened. Oh geez, he drank too much. At least he wasn’t trying to kill him and the Vindicators or something. He tried not to breathe; it was like being in the grasp of a wild animal. He could never figure out his intentions until it was too late.

Stubble scratched his face. Either his grandfather finally had that heart attack and fucking died or else he was nuzzling him. He wanted to believe the former but he murmured, “You’re a good boy, Morty.” Then he slumped against Morty with all his weight. He was asleep.

***

Zeta-03118 and Sigma-71 were shit-faced. Zeta’s lab coat hung on a hook near the door, whereas Sigma had draped his coat over the couch when he came in. Sigma’s pants were unzipped, his shirt was untucked and halfway unbuttoned, and his tie hung loose around his neck. Zeta’s youthful hair stood on end, mimicking his friend’s bedhead. Zeta tried to keep the empty beer cans from accumulating on the coffee table, but he gave up after the first case. The crushed aluminum cans that lay near Sigma’s side of the couch made Zeta cringe when they started drinking, but he was now too drunk to bother moving anything to the trash, nor was he in any shape to get off the couch to begin with.

It was late. Softcore porn played on the TV. Both of them had agreed to watch it for the plot and critique it. After a few movies, they had lapsed into a woozy, withdrawn silence. They blankly watched the most vanilla porn in the universe without bothering to list the multitude of plot holes or bothering to rank the attractiveness of the human participants. It was just mildly suggestive background noise.

“Hey, Zeta,” Sigma-71 slurred. He didn’t move otherwise.

“What?”

“D--do you hate me? Wha--do you?”

“N--no, why? Wh--what kinda question is that?” His mouth didn’t move any easier than Sigma’s.

“I -- I did it. Those kids, th--they’re all--.” He began to hyperventilate. He choked for words.

Zeta slapped a hand on Sigma, signaling him to shut up. “No, S--S--Sigma, no. We--we’re both responsible, if you wanna, wanna point fingers.”

He frowned at the hand that silenced him. Then he reached with his opposite hand to pry Zeta away, but instead of releasing his hand, he entwined their fingers. In order to do so, he had his arm twisted across his body. They remained in that awkward position, not speaking, for some time.

Zeta spoke up first, without moving their hands. “We can never tell anyone. The NDA.”

“Wouldn’t they, err, just think you were crazy?”

“Yeah, but, but th--they don’t want that shit tarnishing the name. Government won’t like it, company won’t like it. It prob’ly won’t get me executed, but it’ll get me one hell of a defamation suit. And no ‘shut up money,’ that’s for damn sure.” During the conversation, he freed his hand from captivity so he could crack his knuckles absentmindedly. Zeta unconsciously mimicked him.

“Heh, guess they got good reason to make us sign that thing, eh, Zeta?” Sigma’s forehead hit his shoulder as soon as he spoke. The bone dug into his face, but the pressure anchored him to the reality that this was the first of many morally ambiguous situations to come. “Woo....” he mumbled to himself. 

“Come on, S--Sig, w--we got work tomorrow.” Zeta pushed him off.

“Fuck.”

Zeta-03118 and Sigma-71 were shit-faced.

***

Like a true functional alcoholic, a splash of water to the face sobered Sigma-71 enough to stumble to work. Zeta-03118 somehow avoided the catastrophe of the headache and the cotton mouth the morning after. The guy was fastidious enough to drink water in between cans of beer, unlike Sigma who completely didn’t care at the time and just wanted to forget his job. He blinked the grit from his eyes. He felt like someone had thrown sand at him. The walk to work was a little less unpleasant with company, but he dreaded the pile of paperwork that accompanied being head chair of the department. He didn’t have the liberty of shooting the breeze all the time with his little unit of Jerrys and their greenhouses, or his other teams that did arguably more important research into aerosolized, close range crowd dispersal agents and fast acting deliriants. 

Since Sigma had spent the night with his underling, he wore the same clothes he wore yesterday. Zeta had felt the need to shower, brush his teeth, comb his hair, and change that morning, and he looked crisp. In fact, he somehow retained the wide-eyed look of a man at his first day on the job, while Sigma-71 long ago gave up the pretense of trying.

Somehow, he thought with a pang, he managed to hold his head up when Sigma drank the recent tragedy away. Even when Zeta drank, he kept his head. Even when Sigma was sober, he was losing his head.

The pile of paperwork hammered the pain and the pressure back into his eyes. The black letters danced and blurred and spun around. He envied his little man who could dick around with his team and fondle white mice all day. Sigma pressed his head onto the desk. So much fucking paperwork. What happened to the pursuit of science?

He remembered with not a little nostalgia the first years of working at Sanchez Pharmaceuticals. He had worked his way up from junior to senior researcher to the associate chair of defensive chemistry once the previous chair passed away, and now he occupied the position of head chair when the position opened up. The previous chair left the company on good terms to work higher up at a rival corporation. He was sure that the man received a fair amount of shut up money.

The clock ticked in time to the throbbing pressure in his head. The light streaming through the blinds seared his vision. He really needed a long lunch break. Maybe he could skip out for an hour and a half. He could hide himself behind the veil of bureaucracy to give himself a little more time to digest the pencil pushing aspect of the job. He could also poke his head into the business of some of his researchers until lunchtime.

Yeah, he would do that.

He started with the most tolerable and least stressful team, which were the Jerrys of defensive chemistry. As a continuation of their work into gaseous genocide, they now worked on a method of harnessing the gas as a vector for targeting enemies with more specificity. In other words, now that the ghetto Morty population was cut to size, the Council wanted a chemical that targeted Gromflomites with specificity while sparing humans. They should have done that in the first place, but he wasn’t a Council member for a reason, he guessed.

He waved the card on the lanyard around his neck and pulled open the door to the ground level laboratory.

Like usual, they were not working very hard. He knew full well that the researchers dragged their feet, and he intentionally looked the other way. The Council didn’t need to know that the hold-up was on purpose. He’d just tell his superiors who would tell their superiors that science marched at its own pace.

As long as Sigma-71 was the HR department and the chair of defensive chemistry, the Jerrys would be safe. Glasses Rick idly watched a one liter beaker in a fume hood sitting on a stirrer hot plate. The magnetic pill at the bottom of the beaker spun and created a tiny swirling indentation in the liquid which, to glasses Rick, seemed to hold the unplumbed secrets of the universe. Stubble Rick and short Rick peered at the computer in the next room with bemused expressions. That was usually the face that scientists wore, nothing unusual to see there. Zeta was probably tending to his plants. Often, when he came in, Zeta was the only one doing any actual work.

“Hey, Specs.”

“Huh? Oh, hello,” he said without breaking his concentration. “Zeta’s probably playing with the lab mice again.” That would mean he was a few doors down the hall. He winced at the fact that glasses Rick knew exactly what he came there for, but at the very least, it meant he didn’t have to skirt around the topic. Ricks picked up on other people’s idiosyncrasies and fast, but unless they had their own ulterior motives, they didn’t care at all what other people did. So he was pretty free to preferentially pick on Zeta without anyone else giving a damn. It probably wasn’t even worth talking about over lunch. He was still the newbie after all.

Sigma, probably due to the residual effects of too much alcohol, also got suckered into watching the whirlpool that the stirrer formed, until Zeta-03118 returned to the lab and made himself known by placing a hand on Sigma’s upper back, just for a second. He turned around.

“Shit.” He coughed. “I mean, I -- how’s it going, kid?”

“Slow.” He looked wide awake. Fucker.

“You, um, you wanna get lunch?” Glasses Rick turned around for a second, but then quickly resumed his important work of making sure the molecules reacted at the atomic level. He knew their weird little thing but he didn’t care at all. It was the Citadel. They had a Morty strip club. Nothing mattered.

Zeta checked the clock. “It’s ten thirty.”

“Glad you can tell time, Einstein. C’mon.” He grabbed his arm and dragged him back out.

***

For the first time since they acquired them, Rick wanted them to use the invisibility devices. He had the bracelet in one hand and the collar in the other, and he put both of them in his endless pockets to be taken back out and donned when they hopped dimensions.

“Alright, M--Morty, th--the important thing, just because they can’t see you doesn’t mean they can’t hear you. So don’t -- don’t fuck this up, okay?” He held up a finger and waved it at him while he talked. When adults did that, they must mean business.

The plan was to infiltrate some eldritch horror society and obtain some kind of purer, less neurodegenerative derivative of the chemical in mega seeds -- with it, Rick said, he could stave off hunger and resist sleep for days and enhance cognitive function without any of the negative effects of mega seeds. It was like methamphetamine without the risk of losing your teeth. The chemical was on the Citadel’s list of banned substances because it could also, when subjected to a tightly guarded secret list of chemical steps, be turned into an advanced agent of chemical warfare that caused an accelerated form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. The modified form of the chemical caused spongification of the human brain, leading to dementia and a painful death, the exact opposite of the effects of the chemical in its unaltered form.

The invisibility devices came in because it was much easier to steal buckets of the substance without being seen. The Lovecraftian monsters tended to absorb lesser lifeforms by digesting them with a mucus that exuded from their skin. They would mop up the soup through a hole in the middle of their locomotive ring of tentacles. They did this not out of malice, but out of an inability to comprehend the form of consciousness that humans and other similar organisms possessed. They saw them as exotic snacks and nothing more.

Rick in his younger days had visited the place before for the same reason, but he barely escaped with his skin intact. With the help of his grandson and the cloaking devices, they should have an easier time getting in and getting out of the dimension quickly. Rick was too old to do it the old-fashioned, independent, gun-toting way. Not to mention that the irregular geometry of the dimension screwed with his head and he needed the young pair of eyes to maintain his sense of direction.

“Alright, MOOOrty, are you ready?” He grinned. Morty did not. “And awaaaaay we go!” The portal yawned and Rick jumped right in. Morty followed reluctantly.

The dimension into which they appeared felt like a nightmare trip into Morty’s high school geometry class. The ground felt like it was somehow hanging from the sky, and sheer walls that rose up at ninety degree angles surrounded them. Floating, rocky crags shrouded by clouds hung in the far distance, their colors distorted by the atmosphere. He rubbed up and down his upper arms to massage away the goosebumps. He wished he had brought a coat, and he stared at Rick’s long sleeves with envy.

“Morty, these, uh, these things are gonna take some getting used to. We won’t be able to see each other, so we gotta stick together physically. H--here, hold my hand.” He extended his right hand to Morty, who lightly held it in his. It was purely practical, but the intimacy comforted him anyway. He rubbed circles with his thumb into the rough palm while Rick dug around with his left hand in his pockets for the devices. He handed the bracelet to Morty first, then got out the kinky metal collar. 

“Can you latch the thing yourself?” Rick raised his eyebrow, daring him to say no.

“Y--yeah, R--Rick.” He fumbled with his free hand but couldn’t get the device to cooperate. He let go of the hand, which resulted in a sharp reprimand.

“Wh--what did I just say, Morty? Don’t let go of me!”

“Yeah, but how am I--?”

“Here, give -- wrap your arm around me. I’m not losing you.” Morty hovered on indecision for the dumb reason that he wasn’t sure where to put his arm. Rick did it for him. He pulled the arm around his waist and took the device from him. He grumbled to himself while he fastened the metal to his wrist. When the latch clicked, he vanished. “Hell of a lot easier on the eyes,” he said to himself. Of course he didn’t see Morty’s glare.

He latched his own device around his neck. They were ready.

“Hold my hand.” They walked with their hands clasped toward a cluster of monolithic, Escheresque structures. Rick was smart enough not to portal them too close in case they ran into trouble from the get go.

The ground seemed to breathe, either that or the irrational geometry was messing with Morty’s head. He felt the ground rise to meet his feet too soon or he felt the ground fall and result in the stomach jolt of missing the last step of a flight of stairs.

“R--Rick, is this a good idea?” Why even bother asking?

“You implying I have bad ideas, Morty?” He could feel the heat on him even if he couldn’t see him.

“Kinda?”

The walk was not as far as they originally estimated. The irregular landscape tricked them into believing the buildings were much farther away, but they actually stood very close. They were, however, very tall. These eldritch creatures were huge.

No sign of life stirred outside of the buildings. No tentacle monsters lurked the streets, for better or worse. They walked right into some sort of imposing cathedral. Rick knew where he was going, like always, and Morty just tagged along for moral support and brainwave shielding. 

Inside, they walked sideways. Or no, they walked vertically upwards across a flat surface. They couldn’t tell. They held hands tight and shuffled sideways up. So far, they hadn’t run into any trouble. It might literally be a get in, get out scenario. They traversed the wonky room until they came upon a yawning doorway that was many feet tall or wide. Their sense of balance was completely off and it caused Morty’s stomach to lurch with every step. He could only imagine how pissed Rick would be if he threw up on his shoes or something. Not to mention the noise and the smell attracting hungry, hungry monsters.

Through the doorway, they came upon a spiral ramp. They began their ascent or their sideways or upside down travel. Somewhere at the end of geometry hell was supposed to be a literal wellspring of pure mega seed derivative, hopefully unguarded. The entire time Morty’s hand clamped around Rick’s, partly for balance and partly for comfort.

The flat landing at the top of the spiral ramp gave them both a chance to recalibrate their vestibular systems. The fluid in their inner ears responded to gravity as nature intended. They sighed at the same time. It felt good to be on a flat surface, but they didn’t stop for long. They had stuff to do.

They padded through the other wide, tall doorway, thankfully left open to trespassers. They wouldn’t have been able to push open the giant stone door themselves, and the sound and the light of Rick’s pen laser would have attracted unwanted attention. Within were columns etched with symbols that appeared to be embossed and engraved at the same time. Curious, Morty stuck out his free hand to run his fingers over the letters. His fingers didn’t know what to make of them either. They sunk into the alien glyphs and they felt the smooth, raised bumps of the embossment at the same time. This place fucked with Morty’s mind.

He felt Rick shift positions to scan the room, slightly dragging Morty’s arm while looking around. The coast was clear, or at least the limitations of their human senses prevented them from noticing the presence of any otherworldly gatekeepers. At the front of the room was a raised altar with a basin full to the brim with fluorescent blue fluid. It glowed and sparkled. It was beautiful and it did not look like something Morty would trust to imbibe in the hopes of cognitive enhancement. How did Rick ever learn about this? How did he learn about anything?

They took small steps forward, stopping every few feet to listen and watch and smell and feel the air. Maybe all the monsters were out and about somewhere. Maybe there was an alien concert, Morty thought as they approached the dais. They now admired the pool of sparkly fluid up close.

The slight rustle of Rick’s coat as he moved his free arm was the only sound besides their breathing that filled the room. They were bugs crawling in a giant’s study. The object that he dug around for in his pockets was also invisible thanks to the collar. Morty still had no idea how the devices worked, just that they seemed to shield in a bubble surrounding the wearer. The liquid rippled as some invisible object disturbed the surface tension. He had brought a large container, of course, so he wouldn’t have to come back anytime soon.

Just then a rumble shook the floor, and a soft, wet sucking noise came from below. They hissed an intake of breath in unison. The rumbling continued, but the sound didn’t seem to travel any closer to them. They hoped they could trust their senses enough to recognize distances properly.

“Alright, we got it, let’s get the hell out of here.”

The portal opened and they jumped through it just as an ethereal wailing sounded from the bottom floor.

They took the devices off, and they breathed the clean air of the apartment that contrasted so much with the mustiness of the other dimension. The whole place had smelled like sulfur and old books. Rick swished the container triumphantly.

“L--look at this, Morty, look at that shit! Whaddya think of that, huh?”

“Y--yeah, yeah, Rick, we didn’t die or anything, that’s -- that’s pretty good.” That went surprisingly well. Being invisible had its perks. “So, uh....” They shuffled their feet.

“Well, I’m gonna try this shit out. See you on the flip, Morty.”

Was it wrong of Morty to have craved a little more adrenaline?

***

Morty pondered the use of the mega seed chemical as a supplement for Mortys in school. It was like doping for the mind. What would the Ricks think about that? If only it weren’t banned, but maybe he could administer it in secret to his charity members. Bake it into some brownies, maybe.

Morty didn’t teach; he orchestrated charity events from the shadows while the more bubbly, eloquent Mortys handled the actual hard work. The spring semester dawned with a fun lesson on how to ask out a crush, since Valentine’s Day was next month. It backfired. He should have seen this coming since there were very few women in the Citadel and all of them were relatives, but the schoolkids asked each other out instead of unrelated women and for the first time, teacher Ricks had to handle relationship issues. In an infinite universe, incest was just a small headache to them, but it still squicked the Ricks out to see their students kissing in the stairwells.

The romantic mix-up caused a stir in the schools, and kids’ grades began to drop because they would text each other under the desks instead of listen to the teacher Ricks and Mortys.

Morty D-013 was the official cause of an incestuous epidemic. He congratulated himself on a job well done. He rubbed the bridge of his nose when one of his volunteers came to tell him after a Wednesday lesson that some Mortys were flirting with him. Who thought it was a good idea to entrap a bunch of horny teenagers in a city with no hope of escape?

He told the volunteer to just politely reject them, but in response, he dumped a pile of handwritten notes on his desk. The lovestruck kids drew hearts and wrote cheesy pick up lines and acted overall adorable if it weren’t for the fact that everyone was the same age and everyone was biologically identical.

They had to start a counter-campaign on healthy relationships and safe sex and it made Morty lose hope in his fellow men. He shoved his apartment door open bodily one day, completely worn out. Rick lazed around on the couch eating a bowl of Lucky Charms marshmallows.

“Hey, Morty, how’s it -- hey,” he said around his spoon. Milk trailed down the corner of his mouth.

He grunted and plopped on the couch.

“What? Did your -- did the stick go too far up your ass?”

“You’re too far up my ass.”

Rick ignored the implications of that.

“Rick -- Rick. I th--think -- I think you’re right.” He wouldn’t make eye contact. His mouth was a thin line. The sound of Rick chewing on his words and on his Lucky Charms filled the pause.

“Mortys are stupid.”

“N--now wait, I never --.”

“They’re -- ugh--.” Morty pinched the bridge of his nose, which had become a habit of his since he became a manager. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to -- to just -- everyone’s so stupid--.” He buried his head in his hands. “I feel like this isn’t gonna work.”

“What? Y--your thing?”

“Yeah, th--the -- yeah. The thing.”

“Morty, the first thing you need to -- no, you shouulda learned by now that Mortys are as dumb as they come. It’s just the natural order of things, Morty.”

“Does it have to be?”

“Do you have a better idea?”


	23. The Citadel of Brotherly Love

Morty scribbled on loose papers in the office, waiting for the other Mortys to report back about the state of the dating scene in the schools.

The door swung open. An unfamiliar Morty in a suit approached him. Under one arm he carried a book and under the other he had some loose papers that threatened to fall to the floor. He hurriedly set them down on the desk so that they wouldn’t flutter to the ground.

The new Morty extended his hand, which he, after a second, shook.

“Well, uh, what’s -- how can I help you?”

“Have you heard about the One True Morty?”

Oh no.

“Th--the--the what? Who?” Mormon Morty drew a deep breath, readying to begin a speech he probably rarely got to make. At this moment, Morty knew he had fucked up.

“He is our prophet, the one who will lead Mortys to independence. He is working through you. We believe he is going to free us from the Ricks.”

“But I--.”

“My brothers and I have heard about what you’re trying to do. We want to help.”

Morty smelled donation money and extra manpower. But what was the catch?

“Are you -- how?”

“We have deep pockets, Morty. Many of your students are already our disciples. We want to reach the ones who are not.”

“I -- I don’t know, mister, uh, Morty.”

Morty took the uncertain response with equanimity. He smiled. A follower of the Prophet knew how to be patient.

“When you’re ready, Morty, you know where to find us.” From the front pocket of his suit jacket, he pulled out a business card, laying it face down on the desk. He disappeared and blended into the foot traffic of the Citadel.

Morty picked up the card and turned it over in his hand. “The Church of Morty.” It listed an address, a phone number, and a website.

Out of curiosity, Morty entered the URL into his phone browser. Mortyism. He’d never heard of it, but it didn’t surprise him that a bunch of abused Mortys would band together to find a sense of purpose. How had that escaped his notice? He didn’t like big religious organizations. The instinctual suspicion came from his grandpa, for sure. He slid the card into a drawer. For emergencies only.

***

A-02 read the news scroll; in one sweep of the eyes, he learned that half of his customer base was dead. What if he and his Mortys had still lived there? Well, the what if didn’t fucking matter, he guessed, because a bunch of Mortys got gassed to death. Not to mention, those same Mortys whose bodies fed the incinerator had supplied their entire income.

Maintaining a steady voice, he said to the other Mortys who played cards at the table, “Hey, look at this.”

“What?”

“Come here.”

They shuffled to the living room. 

“Oh geez, that stinks.”

“Yeah.”

Nobody wanted to be the asshole and point out that their drug supply now far outstripped the demand. The ashes of their customers floated outside the airlock in the darkness of space.

Boss Morty piped up. “Well, I guess I better make some calls.” He had to go down his list of contacts and see how many of them were still alive.

The other Mortys fanned the cards out in their hands, but they didn’t play. Their ears longed to hear a returned call, a voice on the other side, but the phone speaker rang without ceasing. A-02 hung up and dialed another number on his list. Again and again, it went to voicemail or it rang in phone purgatory. A few times, calls connected to live voices, but when they ended, they only deepened Morty’s frown.

After two hours and countless voicemail messages, Morty laid the phone down.

“Okay, Mortys, let me explain the situation.”

Morty and company, the manufacturers and the wholesalers of the most addictive substance in the universe, by pure luck were spared the fate of asphyxiation. However, most of their distributors who actually sold to users, as well as the users themselves, were dead or hospitalized. By a horrible twist of fate, the government had singlehandedly solved the drug problem in Mortytown.

They had to make a decision. They could fill the niche of retail sales, assuming enough customers were left to pad their income. They could also expand past the walls of the Citadel into uncharted, drug-free territories. A-02 didn’t know how blind Rick had met all these people inside the Citadel, and now that his molecules floated in space with the rest of the dead Ricks and Mortys, he could never ask him.

He guessed he could start by asking the few friends he had left that weren’t T-1488 and Upsilon-9. What choice did he have?

***

The bell signaled the appearance of a customer in the clothing store. Morty absently ran his fingers through the clothing on the rack as he passed them on his way to the checkout counter. 

“Omicron?”

“Hello, Morty.” Omicron smiled.

“Uh, I don’t really know how to say this....” Morty had his hand on the back of his head. He shifted his weight. He really needed to confess this.

“What?”

Morty sighed. “So I told you how the charity’s going, I’ve been texting you.”

“Yes.”

“But I, um, I ran into a -- well --.” Morty divulged the great dating game going on in Morty school that bothered him so much.

“That’s it?”

“I mean, yeah?”

“I thought -- I thought it would be something important.”

“Incest is--isn’t important?”

“Not in the Citadel.”

“But--.” Morty blinked to wave away the confusion. In every society he had visited, incest was frowned upon. He kept his own fantasies tightly wrapped, except when Rick coaxed them out by force.

“Morty, truthfully, truthfully Ricks and Mortys do this more often than you think.”

“Are you -- really?” Now that he thought about it, the Citadel was the hot spot for sexually frustrated males. How did it never occur to him that he and Rick probably weren’t the only ones dancing around the idea of sexual relations?

“And in your case, Mortys and Mortys.”

“Wow. Um.” Wow. What a strange world they all lived in.

“Anyway, how’s the lessons going? Besides the budding romance.”

“Good, good. We’re teaching them how to be adults.” He couldn’t help but feel a little pride. He thought of them like his children, even though they were the same age.

“That’s cool. Have you taught them how to crochet?”

“N--no, not yet....”

Omicron feigned disappointment. “Maybe someday.”

***

“Are--aren’t there laws about, about this?” Zeta-03118 asked as the head of defensive chemistry slipped a hand underneath his shirt.

“Yeah, I guess there are policies and whatever. It’s not illegal though.” His hand grazed his nipple, and he hissed at the contact.

“I just, I don’t know, it’s wrong.” Zeta was currently pressed against the desk, with Sigma nearly on top of him, his back to the closed and locked door.

Sigma-71 trailed kisses up the side of his neck and jaw. “Mm hmm.” Zeta kept peeking over his shoulder at the door, struggling to listen for footsteps as Sigma worked on making him melt.

“Does it have to be here?” he hissed.

“For fuck’s sake, Zeta, can you lighten up?” He yanked Zeta forward by the lapels of his jacket, pulling him into a kiss. Despite his best efforts, he relented to his boss’s probing tongue. There was something hot about doing it at work. They didn’t often see each other anymore except during business hours, and every time Sigma-71 popped into the lab, everyone focused extra hard on their assignments because they knew exactly what was going on. But it would be a betrayal to their newbie to say anything about it.

The company had a strict policy about intra-company relations. The higher ups agreed, probably while banging each other and snorting coke, that it got in the way of science.

Sigma shoved the items on his desk to the floor and pushed Zeta down so he lay flat on his back against the desk top. He loomed over the other man with that sleazy Sanchez grin.

“Don’t, I mean damn, don’t be such a puss.” His mouth found his again. Between kisses and unbuttoning his shirt: “I’m the king here, no one’s gonna question us.”

“I mean, are you sure?” He felt the cold office air conditioning against his overwarm skin.

“Yeah,” he said as his hand lingered over the waistband of his pants.

The hair on Zeta’s legs stood on end on contact with the air, his blue slacks pooled around his ankles. He strained against the clothing that still remained on him. Sigma crouched, hands squeezing his bare upper thighs, leaving red marks. His breath ghosted over his clothed erection, which made it jump.

“C’mon, S--Sig, this isn’t --.” He gasped when he mouthed the tip through the fabric. His knees shook. Sigma’s fingers hooked on the elastic. “God, wh--what if someone comes in?”

“No one’s gonna come in.”

“Lunch is almost over.”

“Then we better make it quick, huh?” Sigma-71 pulled the underwear down, allowing Zeta’s erection to spring free. He felt very, very exposed and out of place in his superior’s office, on the verge of receiving a blowjob from his boss, who currently eyed his cock with lust blown eyes.

The light fixture in his field of view wavered when his lips made contact.

***

A-02 Morty casually swung the door of the clothing store open. The Morty at the counter recognized him instantly.

“Hey, A-02, how are you?”

“Could be better, Omicron.” He scuffed the floor with the heel of his shoe, not making eye contact. They both knew without speaking that the tragedy of Mortytown had taken a real toll on his business.

“I was actually going to ask you for some advice.”

Omicron checked for eyes and ears, then leaned over the counter.

“Okay, what is it?”

“My customers are dead. My contacts are dead. I have a big supply and nowhere to go. What do I do?”

Omicron looked thoughtful. “I might ... know some people. Give me some time.”

A-02 began to head for the door.

“And, um, take it easy, okay? Mortys gotta stick together.”

He flicked him the OK sign and then pushed his way outside again.

***

“Absolutely not. Are you fucking stupid, Morty?”

“I mean, I don’t know, I just thought, I mean, what else are we gonna do with it?”

“I don’t know yet, but not that.” Rick finalized his statement by turning away in his swivel chair and bending over the table, which was covered by screws and plates of metal. Morty sat on the bed, twiddling his thumbs and idly kicking his feet.

Earlier, he had remembered their excursion to the eldritch land and asked Rick a very impertinent question about the nature and the use of the blue liquid.

He explained between belches and swigs of vodka that the liquid enhanced the firing of synapses in the brain, allowing for greater memory storage. It also had an effect similar to a nootropic drug in that it gave the user more energy and better cognitive abilities, as well as a reduced need for sleep. It was like meth but longer lasting. As long as the user imbibed the substance once a day, the effects would last.

Morty wanted to try some for himself.

Rick made it absolutely clear that the chemical should remain untouched. He had more important things to do with it, he said. Morty thought he was just going to hoard the drug for himself instead of share it, so he could be the smartest Rick in the Citadel.

However, Morty didn’t argue. He just stared hungrily at the vial on the top shelf above the table and thought about whether he could get away with stealing it.

***

“Under no circumstances may a supervisor date, become romantically involved with, or have sexual relations with a reporting employee.” This was listed in the employee handbook along with details about sexual harassment.

A Rick wearing a sport coat and tie read the policy to Zeta-03118 and Sigma-71 as they sat side by side in matching leather chairs. An indoor plant presided over the three of them from the corner of the room.

Someone had ratted them out.

The Rick behind the desk sighed and closed the copy of the employee rules. “You know, Sigma, what we do when these things happen.”

He choked out a “Yes.”

“It’s a security risk. He--.” He gestured to Zeta. “He has a lower clearance. We’re not saying that you told him anything confidential, but the risk is too high.

“Zeta-03118, Sigma-71, you’ve been terminated.”

Glued to their seats, they simply exchanged frightened glances.

All three of them stood up at the same time. Superior Rick extended a hand to each of them in turn. They dumbly shook it.

“Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t’ve fired you if I didn’t have to. Just following rules.” His mouth formed a thin line. “It was nice working with you, Sigma. You’ll get your final check in the mail.”

Sigma-71 and Zeta-03118 returned to the office and to the lab, respectively, to clean out their stations. They met up in the lobby. It was right around lunchtime. 

Zeta didn’t cry, but he sure felt empty. Jobless again. But at least he had a friend, who currently held a box with all his belongings in the world, and who was asking him something that he didn’t catch.

“What?”

“I said, do you wanna get lunch?”

“I -- I guess. What else are we gonna do?”

***

Omicron knew people outside the Citadel; A-02 didn’t want to know how, but he did, and now he had a list of potential clients. He breathed a sigh of relief, sandwiched between Upsilon-9 and T-1488 while the two watched some stupid reality TV show, and scrolled through Omicron’s long text message.

Thankfully, his time as a runner had taught him how to read the alien characters and recognize their phone numbers, which were almost unrecognizable as such unless you were already familiar with them.

He shot some of them a message, using the appropriate greetings in the aliens’ native languages. Clients liked the personal touch.

It was time to expand.


	24. Rickless Misbehavior

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2019 is over, thank goodness. May you have a blessed 2020. 
> 
> I have been posting this fic in small pieces for months. The fall semester of 2019 took a lot out of me, so I have been slow and reclusive. I thank you, readers, for accompanying me on this journey. You are eternally patient.
> 
> I am, truthfully, self-conscious about this work. But I started posting it in the hope that it would spark joy. Please let me know if it sparks joy. If it does not spark joy, don't be afraid to tell me. I appreciate every comment and kudos.

The Mortys were getting smarter, whether the Ricks liked it or not. The teacher Ricks grumbled in the teacher’s lounge about the Mortys that taught on Wednesdays. It seemed to cause an undercurrent of rebellion in the schools, not to mention the sudden problematic occurrence of high school level relationships.

The Mortys still sat at attention in their desks; between passing notes, texting, doodling, or jerking each other off under the tables, they did listen and absorb the lessons, some would say better than they had before. The only good thing about the Morty teachers was the increased morale, which boosted the students’ productivity. It reduced absenteeism and calling off sick, and it seemed like they had more confidence.

But that wasn’t necessarily what the Ricks wanted. Their carefully constructed curriculum was designed to eliminate the chance of producing a cocky Morty. But it took one stupid Morty and a team of volunteers to upturn the psychological conditioning program.

Morty enjoyed hearing the progress reports from his underlings. He reveled in the chaos he had created. The Mortys had begun creating after school clubs and doing study groups together, things they had never had the confidence to do before. The Ricks allowed it, but they supervised closely. They still had to graduate a minimum number of Mortys each year, so they had to stay on top of their education.

Meanwhile, the Mortys who really hit it off with the Morty teachers began doing their own work with the charity and counting it as an extracurricular activity.

This meant Morty had extra help, and he could sit back and doodle. Suffice it to say, he felt pretty damn proud of himself.

One day, a tall man pulled the door open and padded toward Morty, looking rather unsure of himself, considering he was a Rick.

Morty actually put down his pencil and gave this man his full attention. No Rick had ever set foot in his office before.

The man in front of him, unlike most Ricks, had pure white hair, cut short and combed. He wore a vest and coughed to clear his throat before addressing Morty.

“Hi, uh, I’m kind of ... unemployed .... And I thought you might need some help.” He looked sheepish. Not very Ricklike.

“Well, uh, we have a lot of volunteers as it is --.”

“But wait. You don’t have any Ricks, do you?”

“N--no, I guess not.”

“You need someone to legitimize your campaign. As it is, no one’s going to take a pack of Mortys seriously.”

Morty sighed. He was right. Rick was always right.

“Okay, Rick. You got any ideas?”

“Well, I was -- yes, actually. I do.”

Rick pulled up a chair and sat across from Morty. Even though, to untrained eyes, he resembled just another soft, old man, he still had a hard glint in his eyes that was unmistakably Rick.

They talked for about an hour, and came to a conclusion.

***

Zeta-03118 and Sigma-71 had celebrated their termination at an upscale restaurant that lay within sight of their former office. Over wine glasses and rare steaks, they comforted each other over the loss of their jobs, the jobs that had asked them to do the unspeakable and keep quiet about it.

They both, without communicating it, turned their heads in the direction of Mortytown, recognizable by the smog that floated only over that part of the city.

They talked about a lot of things, but it always seemed to dance around the topic of Mortytown. First they murdered a neighborhood of people, then they were fired for striking up a relationship at work. They needed a way to expunge the guilt. Zeta thought of that charity. Maybe if he threw himself into the midst of Mortys, he could atone for the deaths of all those people. Sigma didn’t agree.

“You can’t bring ‘em back, Zeta.”

“I know that!” he spat out. “But I just -- maybe it would be good.”

“Maybe.” 

Zeta pushed vegetables around his plate. He felt like shit. Those nameless, faceless people haunted him every day. Judging by Sigma’s under eye circles and scruffy facial hair, it haunted him too.

Sigma interrupted Zeta. “Can I--?” Stay at your house?

“Yeah.” He wondered what was so dangerous about his house, but being a Rick, he had an idea.

***

Rick and Morty, in a rare moment of camaraderie, enjoyed the uninhabited dimension. The pine forest rustled in perpetual darkness, with nothing but the stars and two moons to cast stark shadows. They dangled their legs over the edge of a cliff. The moons shone on them like a spotlight.

Rick waxed philosophical under the streak of the galaxy in the sky. His open flask dribbled alcohol onto his lap and onto the trees below. His right arm wound around Morty’s neck as he talked.

“M--Morty -- eeeugh -- in the gr--grand scheme of things, Morty, the difference between frozen yogurt a--and ice cream isn’t really, uh, isn’t really all that big, you know?”

“Y--yeah, Rick, I guess.” Morty rolled his eyes. He didn’t really listen to Rick when he got super drunk and pontificated on meaningless topics, but he enjoyed the weight of his arm around his shoulders. He felt close and cozy and very small under the night sky. He could smell the alcohol and something like bleach from his lab coat. His rough hand absently rubbed him through his shirt, a soothing motion that, along with his gravelly voice, lulled Morty into a trance.

His problems felt very far away, and his grandfather was so near, filling his senses.

“Morty.”

“What?” He turned to face his grandfather, who assumed an unusually serious expression, considering the many minutes he had spent going on about the pros and cons of various snack foods.

He set the flask down on the rock and used the now free hand to run a calloused thumb across Morty’s cheek. 

“What--?”

His grandfather leaned closer, and Morty trembled. He could feel the breath against his face, strong enough to peel paint, and Morty could just . . . meet him halfway . . . . 

Their lips met, just barely, just enough to make Morty’s lips tingle. They both leaned away a little, the light of the stars reflected in their eyes.

Something in Morty, from deep within, flared up like a wildfire; he surged forward and crushed their lips together, clacking teeth and smashing their noses together. It must have caught Rick by surprise because he didn’t react at first. His eyes remained open in shock and he didn’t reciprocate. His arms lay limply by his sides.

Morty hoped against hope that this moment would never end.

The only thought in his head played on repeat like a stuck CD: _Rick didn’t pull away, he didn’t pull away, he wasn’t pulling away --._

He could almost hear Rick’s resolve snap like a rubber band pulled taut and then released; he pressed forward, eyes shut, and moved his lips against Morty’s. Morty couldn’t bear to shut his eyes; he wanted to see every inch of his grandfather. But instinctually, his eyes closed and he was absorbed into the kiss.

Morty’s hand, of its own accord, reached for Rick’s bony shoulder. At the same time, Rick’s hand traveled to the nape of his neck, burying itself in the brown curls. Morty whimpered at the subtle pulling of his hair, which seemed to stir Rick into action. Their kiss deepened, and Morty felt himself falling back against the rock. His back hit the cold stone. He was dangerously close to the edge. They pulled away from each other, and they both stared over the precipice. They scooted over and now that they were physically safe, they stared at each other in confusion. What now?

Rick towered over him, blocking the view of the galaxy above. It was just him and the stone that Morty rested on. The trees that rustled below played background music to some fucked up romance.

Rick bent over him to catch his mouth again. His hand slipped behind his head to cushion him from the rock and to keep him from either sinking into the ground or floating into the stars. It was the hand that anchored him to reality.

How the hell did this happen? What events led to this man’s acidic tongue, the one that brought down civilizations and tore everyone down one word at a time, pressing against his mouth? And why did he let him in?

Morty wrapped his arms around his neck, holding him in that position. His mouth opened just enough to let Rick’s tongue slip inside. He moaned at the insistent tongue exploring his mouth. He felt open and undone and he was rising and falling at the same time and good God Rick moved just the right way to send heat traveling south.

They parted long enough to catch their breath and reevaluate their lives.

Morty said softly, “What the fuck, Rick?”

“Yeah. What the fuck?” Rick rested his forehead against Morty’s. They were both sweating despite the air on the high cliff drawing goosebumps on their arms.

Morty hoped that Rick didn’t feel his dick, which began to come to life without his consent. They were so close. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. He flicked his eyes toward the edge of the cliff and wondered if he would wake up if he flung himself off of it.

Rick shifted above him, enough to pull back and make eye contact.

“This isn’t normal.”

Morty stifled a laugh. Was that the grand observation from the smartest man in the universe? “Are you fucking kidding me? Y--you, nothing about this is normal.”

He went on. “Y--you--you ripped me from my home and from school and -- and we live in -- everyone’s Rick and Morty here, and you’re worried about _normal?”_

He was on the cusp of retorting, but Morty refused. “No, no, you don’t -- just don’t. Shut up.”

“No,” Rick said, suddenly grabbing him by the shoulders like he was going to shake him. “No, you listen, y--you little fuck. Th--this isn’t some, some fuckin’ fairytale, it’s not that easy.”

“Why?”

“Why? Wha -- I don’t know if me -- if -- you’re my grandson! You piece of shit, d--don’t you understand? Don’t you understand how, how fucked up this is?” He sounded increasingly desperate. “It’s -- I’m not some girl from class, I’m an old man. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna coddle you.

“I take what I want, Morty.” Unspoken was the plea: _Turn back now._

“I don’t care. I want you.” Morty tried to pull him back down, but he remained crouching above him, away from Morty’s parted lips.

“Y--you don’t know what you want,” he said in a defeated whisper. It no longer held the same bite. Maybe it was uncertainty that crept into his voice, for the first time since he had known him.

“Keep lying to yourself. I’m not a -- I’m not a -- a kid anymore.” At that moment, he struck. His hand darted out and he yanked Rick down by the collar. While he was down and still dazed, Morty kissed him roughly. And Rick returned it.

“Fuck.” Rick groaned. “You’re taking years off my life.”

Putting his arms behind his head, Morty admired his handiwork. The moon cast enough of a light that he could see his grandfather’s flustered expression. After all that talk about never letting his guard down again, he thought he’d never see the day when he could catch the man by surprise.

The question they shared without speaking: _Now what?_

***

Morty A-02 bought a ship that rivaled that of his neighbor’s. No, not only rivaled, but surpassed. In fact, it wasn’t built from spare parts in a human being’s garage, but built by the alien equivalent of the Germans. It was a beauty of engineering, fitted with an intelligent autopilot and navigation system. It could withstand the impact of space debris and artillery fire thanks to its sturdy, lightweight exterior, and it had plenty of cupholders. It was a flying tank powered by a cold fusion reaction. It was the preferred ship for a space pirate like himself. He refused to bring his two Mortys with him on his upcoming trip, even though that meant no one was in the back to control the weapons system if anything went wrong.

The other two Mortys walked around the ship, admiring it yet not quite understanding its intricacies, while A-02 threw stuff in the back and then opened the front to check the dipstick. 

“Alright, guys, you know the drill. If I don’t come back, sell the stuff, take the money, and run.” They nodded. Father Morty always went over their directions before he left for longer than a day.

Finished with inspecting the cold fusion reactor, he clicked the key fob and the hatch on the driver’s side lifted. As he ascended, he waved at his rapidly shrinking brothers. He shot a portal into the sky (that feature had cost him quite a bit extra) and zipped through before anyone in the Citadel could make note of it.

He set the autopilot toward a distant asteroid belt, leaned back, and watched the emptiness of space outside his windshield.

This asteroid housed a mining colony, powered by nuclear reactions and drugs; while the nuclear power plant provided energy for the mining equipment, he provided energy for the workers in the form of shake, thousands of dollars of which sat tucked away in a floor crawlspace, safe from the scrutiny of Federation checkpoints. Luckily, he set his ship navigation to avoid checkpoints and tolls whenever possible, but sometimes new ones opened overnight before the nav could update.

That, and the fact that space pirates actually existed and would definitely turn his nice ship upside down looking for the drug stash, were the reasons that he kept his eyes peeled in the grand expanse of outer space.

After an hour or two, some objects appeared on the radar, and he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been intercepted in that time. As he approached the asteroid belt, he turned off the autopilot and steered the ship toward the largest asteroid, which was dotted with machinery. It was large enough to have been terraformed to some extent, and it held onto the artificial atmosphere that the aliens created.

Some scaly, six-legged creatures guarded the landing site. They raised their weapons as he lowered the ship. The wind generated from underneath blew their equivalent of auditory organs back like hair whipping from a strong breeze, but their six legs hunkered into the sand of the asteroid. They pointed their arms at the open hatch; he stepped out to a deep, infrasonic growl that he felt rather than heard. It was their way of communicating, or threatening.

One of them lumbered forward with its gun still raised. Its four nostrils blew hot breath against his face, ruffling Morty’s hair and moistening his skin.

After inspection, dual rows of spines rattled on its back, indicating to the group behind it that this alien was safe. They holstered their weapons. It stepped back and communicated in the human audible range via a collar wrapped around its neck.

In a tinny, robotic voice, it said, “Show us your wares.”

He wordlessly rummaged around in the trunk for the unassuming bag of merchandise. Maybe he should package his stuff more professionally; as it was, he pulled out a black trash bag from the floor compartment in the trunk. Insofar as the aliens were able to replicate human nonverbal cues, they seemed unimpressed, but they dug out their neatly rolled bills anyway.

Only when Morty was enveloped in the void of space again did he finally release the breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

***

Rick and Morty danced around their romantic excursion in the pine forest dimension. The answer to their problem, if Rick were forced to express it, was to not think about it. So they tried not to think about it.

Morty found it impossible to not think about it. In fact, he was so caught up in not thinking about it that it was all he ever thought about. He was right back to his college days, imagining those rough hands all over him, in his hair --. The feel of his lips even as they spat insults at him.

One day, he allowed an unscrewed bottle of organic solvent to slip out of his fingers when he handed it to his grandfather, just because their fingers happened to brush past each other. Rick slid back in his chair to avoid the splash of the chemical as it hit the floor.

“God, God dammit, Morty!” They both stared sullenly at the soaked carpet. Fuck. He did it this time. “C--can’t you get your shit together?”

“S--sorry, Rick.”

Another time, they were repairing the ship. Well, actually, it was Rick repairing the ship, but he had asked Morty to come outside with him for “moral support.” Morty thought to himself that he had no morals to support, but he accompanied him anyway.

While he stood with his arms crossed, his grandfather bent very far into the hood of the ship, rooting around for something that had been rattling around in there driving him crazy for the past few weeks.

“H--hey,” he said, muffled, “your hands are smaller. Help me out.”

Morty shuffled forward, but as he moved toward the ship, his elbow hit the stick that held the hood up. The hood crashed down right on top of Rick, squishing him like a bug under a boot. He yelled obscenities at Morty until he lifted it off of him, and he promptly skittered backwards away from the ship, all while fiercely glaring at him.

He was too shocked to apologize at first, but as it turned out, the more he apologized later that night, the worse Rick’s temper flared, like adding wood to a bonfire. He finally had to lock himself in his room until his drunken rampage died down. He hid his face in his pillow that night to muffle the muttered curses and clinking glass of bottles in the main room. Maybe he would suffocate, and it would all be mercifully over.

The third time was the charm. The prize winner. They were harvesting flowers on an alien planet for some customer online that didn’t want to perform the legwork themselves. For a fee, Rick was happy to oblige.

Morty had a burlap sack slung over his shoulder; gloves protected his hands from the toxic secretions of the flowers and they protected the flowers from the oils on his skin. He worked a little ahead of Rick, who kept stopping to drink from his flask, not at all worried about the rash and the possible anaphylactic shock that the flowers caused if their chemicals touched human flesh.

“M--Morty, slEUGhow down. D--don’t get ahead of me.”

“S--sorry.” Morty stopped and tucked a loose curl of hair behind his ear.

After a few more minutes of picking flowers off of bushes, he began to wheeze, and his eyes watered. He should have taken an allergy pill beforehand. He resisted the urge to rub his eyes. Rick caught up with him as he slowed down. By that time, his skin had erupted into hives and he coughed with every other breath.

“Oh fuck, Morty, d--did you touch your face?” He twirled him around to assess his physical symptoms. As he caught notice of the spreading rash and the redness of his ear where he had moved his hair, he said, “Go--God dammit, Morty.” He cursed under his breath continuously while he opened a portal back home and dragged Morty through it into Rick’s bedroom.

He tossed medical supplies around his room until he unearthed what he was looking for: an EpiPen. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. Ugh.” He pulled off the blue cap and jammed the needle into Morty’s thigh with practiced ease, holding it there for several seconds, but not without complaining that Morty was useless and couldn’t even be trusted to take a shit without constant supervision.

“O--okay, Morty, let’s take a shower. Can’t risk any residue on our skin. I -- I only have so many of these,” he said, indicating the EpiPens. 

Rick turned the water on a little too hot, and they stepped in together. The welts on Morty’s skin had receded, but he still felt the ghost of an itch as the hot water washed away the particulate matter. The fact that they stood within inches of each other, naked, did not escape his notice, despite the fact that he narrowly avoided death by flower just minutes ago.

The steam opened his airways, but he did not breathe any more easily. The inhale and exhale stuck in his chest, either from residual irritation or from something else. He mostly stared at his feet, but he felt a burning apart from the water beating his head, and his gaze traveled up the lean, hairy legs, quickly past the midsection, and then became trapped in Rick’s glare.

“F--for fuck’s sake, Morty, c--can’t you do anything right?” The man’s arms crossed over his chest; he was pissed. “I -- God, Morty, our bags were barely half full before I had to drag your -- your sorry ass back here because you -- you couldn’t -- couldn’t keep your hands to y--to where they were supposed to be.” Was he actually mad about that? Couldn’t they just go back later?

Morty heard that rubber band snapping sound, the sound of a decision being made, that decision being the one to shove Morty to the opposite end of the shower. His back thumped against the wall. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish. The impact knocked any sort of coherent response from him. How drunk was he? He kept throwing insults Morty’s way. Surely his point was already made. In the confined space, he had nowhere to escape. The one that really hit home was the one that accused him of being stupid. At that, Morty’s face crumpled. He sure as hell felt stupid. He felt like a screw up.

“C’mon, Morty, are you -- are you really gonna start this now?”

His eyes screwed shut; he nodded. Whether he liked it or not, the past few weeks wore away his resolve, and all the repressed emotion seeped out through his closed eyelids at that one word. _Stupid._ He was completely exposed to his grandpa’s sharp tongue, without even the thin fabric of his clothing to hide behind.

He finally choked out an “I’m sorry, Rick” before he blindly reached for a towel. His eyes stung but at least the shower head hid most of the shame. He stumbled out of the shower, his feet having to kick away the clinging material of the shower curtain as he stepped out. The awkward escape flung water across the bathroom, and he just felt worse. He buried his face in the towel, which he realized wasn’t his. It was Rick’s.

That was it. He fucking sobbed, something he hadn’t done since he was fourteen. He was such a damn screw up. Couldn’t even pick flowers in a meadow without almost dying. Couldn’t even grab the right towel. He was such a disappointment.

But it wasn’t really about that. It never was. It was that weird ass kiss under the stars that tore his walls down enough to allow Rick’s insults and his own failures to nip at him until he broke down crying. He just wanted; he wanted so bad, but the person he wanted was not behind the plastic drape. He wasn’t real.

The water stopped, and the curtain drew back. “Hey, what--?” Instead of leaving, Morty just shook and struggled to still his heaving shoulders. “Hey, Mort--.”

“What?” He hated how pathetic he sounded, muffled in the dense fog of the bathroom, voice cracking in the middle. He sounded so small. He refused to turn around. He ran out of the bathroom, still dripping wet.

Fuck.


End file.
